


Amaz(on)ing Stiles

by melly_diamond, readbythilia (thilia)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alexa - Freeform, Alternate Universe, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Download Available, M/M, Podfic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 2-2.5 Hours, programmer stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-06-30 11:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19851916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melly_diamond/pseuds/melly_diamond, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thilia/pseuds/readbythilia
Summary: Stiles is a worker bee in the sprawling world of Amazon, tasked with creating innovative new products and enhancing existing ones under the guidance of Lydia Martin, head of R&D. When she pushes him to create something even bigger and better than Alexa, he fumes, but obliges, creating the ultimate AI prototype. It's more than a reminder system - it's a friend.But does it go too far?A version is shipped to one Derek Hale, who doesn't even talk to people, let alone electronic devices, and has no use for friends. Will it change his life, or change Stiles' life, or both? Will it bring down Amazon? Will someone wind up in prison? No one knows.





	Amaz(on)ing Stiles

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea rattling around for a while, and as society immerses itself more and more deeply into technology, and moves away from one-on-one interaction with other human beings, the story started to solidify for me. How much electronic effect on our lives is too much? At what point does it become less of a benefit and more of a nuisance? How intrusive is TOO intrusive?
> 
> Disclaimer: This is, of course, a work of fiction; I have never worked at Amazon, know no one who does, and do not own an Alexa. Like Derek, I try to not even speak to humans, let alone chat with disembodied voices that know more than me. This was written specifically for this challenge and is an original work of fiction. Thanks to my cheerleader, thilia, who was, as always positive and encouraging. Listen to her read this! She's brilliant.
> 
> thilia: Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it? So long that I don't even remember how I used to improve the sound on my podfics. Or how to podfic in general. Ahem. Anyway, the story's fun and cute, and working with melly_diamond was a pleasure, as always, so give it a read or listen! ♥

  
  
  
[MP3 with music](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/zas8p7epimkt5ja/%5Bpodfic%5D%20Amaz%5Bon%5Ding%20Stiles%20%28with%20music%29.mp3) [02:22:36 | 130 MB]  
[MP3 without music](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/tjqdo7fa3t2x3rm/%5Bpodfic%5D%20Amaz%5Bon%5Ding%20Stiles.mp3) [02:21:10 | 129 MB]

**  
**  


* * *

  
INTERNAL MEMO:  
This memo will be available for 12 hours only. Read and retain!

 **To:** R&D Team 4 – Alexa  
**From:** Lydia Martin, MBA, Team Leader  
**Re:** Core Innovation to Current Product

_Per our last team discussion, the changes to the Alexa product will be put into production on February 4, 2019. On that day, users of this product will have access to many new changes and upgrades to its current services, including more personalized functions; suggestions on reading, listening, current events, local and national area organizations of interest of the selective end user. In an attempt to allow Alexa to be of further use to the discerning individual, the device will have more programmable options than ever – which means more direct customer support and response to concerns and suggestions from the end user. This rollout will happen between 3 and 6 AM EST, so be ready.  
\- LM_

Stiles read this missive while munching a peanut butter and banana sandwich in the small, two-person cube allotted for those who consumed peanut products. To enter, one needed their employee punch code, and to exit, what amounted to a decontamination shower, complete with strong chemicals to kill any random peanut bits that might linger on one’s person. He didn’t much care; it was a sufficiently large pain in the ass so that most others just opted for hot lunch and fresh air.

Stiles needed neither, and he enjoyed the privacy in the corner of his departmental floor, where he was relegated; eating peanut products was the new smoking and was treated with the appropriate amount of scorn such activities deserved.

Today, however, he was not alone; Isaac Lahey, a shy programmer who normally ate at his desk – sometimes under, just to get away – and often wept under there as well, had joined him.

“Hullo, Stilinski,” he said, in a rare attempt at human communication. “Decided to fight the power today, huh?”

Stiles finished chewing and swigged some of his Diet Dr. Pepper from his 32-ounce Big Gulp – another habit frowned on by his teammates, who prided themselves on spring water from Denmark, drunk _only_ from reusable, PABA-free, earth-friendly cups – and wiped his mouth. “Yeah, well, sometimes you just need to rebel,” he said. He was mildly irritated at the interruption, but Isaac was a good sort, if you could get him on a topic he enjoyed. Stiles had found he enjoyed bitching and moaning, and since Stiles also enjoyed that, they got along fine. “I’m surprised to see you out from under your desk. I’ve been meaning to check it out; word has it that you’ve created a Costanza-like cubby under there, complete with chocolate and porn. Is this true?”

“I’ve looked into that,” admitted Isaac. “I’m just a little too tall, unfortunately, or else, am not limber enough. I tried a cat nap under there and had to go to the chiropractor the next day, so I guess it’s a no-go."

He sighed. “I bet Dunbar could fit in there, even with his massive thighs. Goddamn shorties.”

“Yeah, what is he trying to do? I mean, I get working out – don’t do it myself, but I see the point – but he’s just solid muscle. He dropped a paperclip the other day, bent over, split his slacks and gave the temp pool a group orgasm.”

Isaac snorted into his PABA-free cup. “Maybe that’s what he’s trying to do.”

“Well kudos to him then – mission accomplished, that furry little bastard.” It was true; Dunbar was a fuzzy little guy who resembled nothing so much as a baby bear with an insane ability to code like the wind. Stiles honestly didn’t see how those little paws hit the keys that fast. It was like watching lightning sweep across water.

How poetic; he snorted. Lahey was watching him with a “hmm?” smile, a “what the fuck are you thinking about now, Stilinski?" smile. Stiles was all too familiar with same. He shrugged, took a bite of his sandwich, and they chewed in companionable silence for a few moments, there in the ‘bad corner’.

Isaac finished his sandwich. “So, are you nervous about performance reviews?” he asked. “Word has it that Ms. Martin is pretty tough in her assessment and some people are afraid they’re gonna be canned.”

“I can think of a few who should be,” replied Stiles. “But I’ve heard that too. I think I’m pretty safe though; I’ve hit all my markers consistently, my metrics are good, I talk a lot in meetings – I feel okay about them. You?”

He didn’t even care, but he played the game.

“I...” Isaac paused. “I think I’m okay. I’d like to do better than meets expectations, but I’ve been working pretty hard on this Alexa launch and I think that might push me over. Guess all I can do is hope and wear clean underwear that day.”

Stiles raised a brow. “Don’t you always? You strike me as a daily-shower type. If not, do you turn them inside out or Febreze them or do you …”

Too late he realized Isaac was being folksy and he was overthinking this, per usual, and also, probably outing himself as the sort of dude who occasionally ran low on boxers and had to do the turn-out trick. Oops.

Isaac smiled at him and finished his water. “I need some air – you coming out?”

“Nah, I’m staying in.” And whoa, could _that_ be interpreted any number of ways? Ugh. “You have a good rest of your day, dude. Peanut bros for life!”

He waved, Isaac snorted and waved back, and then Stiles was alone for three blessed minutes before it was time to go to the bathroom, wash his hands, decontaminate his clothes, do penance, say 40 Hail Marys and 40 Our Fathers for his sins, and return to his desk, nut-free. So to speak.

*~*

Derek was trying really, really hard to not lose patience with Cora. He was, but he didn’t know how well he was doing – probably not well at all.

He held his iPhone that his sisters had insisted he buy loosely in his hand, not even needing speakerphone – she was that loud.

“Cora. CORA, listen to me, will you? I am fine. Seriously, F-I-N-E. I am eating, sleeping, walking upright, all that good stuff.” He listened, sighed. “I’m talking to you right now, aren’t I?”

The sausages he was cooking hissed on the stove, and he lifted the frying pan, shaking them around to get more char on them. “Why do I have to talk to others? I do what I need to. You want me to call random stranger and ask them what’s up?”

He set the pan down, closed his eyes for a moment. “Cora,” he said slowly. “I am not a recluse. I am not a hermit. I’m a guy who enjoys his solitude. I am not you, I am not Laura. I’m getting along just fine.”

He slid the sausages onto a plate alongside the pile of scrambled eggs and cheese already heaped up there and turned the stove off. “Look, baby sis, I love you. And I am touched that you worry about me, but I swear it’s okay. It is. I’m not hiding, I’m not repressing. I’m not … I don’t need a support group, for fucks sake! I am FINE!”

Okay. Okay, okay, maybe people who were totally fine did not shout into an Apple product at their younger siblings, but this one got on his last nerve. “I’m hanging up now,” he managed. “Just don’t worry, all right? Love you.”

He pressed “end call” and mentally added, “And leave me the fuck alone already.”

He set the phone down very carefully, resisting the urge to throw it against the brick fireplace and watch it shatter, then sat down at the counter, his plate in front of him and ate steadily, eyes on his plate, steady, while he counted and breathed. Counted and breathed.

Counted and breathed.

His former therapist would be proud

It wasn’t that Derek hated people, though his sisters would claim otherwise – it’s just that he generally found most people stupid, stubborn and generally objectionable. And they were nosy – Derek hated nosy. What he did was his own business and he didn’t bother anyone, so honestly, let him be. If he wanted to talk to anyone, he would; he talked to the people at the grocery store, the mail carrier when they delivered a package, his sisters when they called, albeit reluctantly. And they wouldn’t even be so bad if they just, yeah, let him be himself. Antisocial Derek.

There were far worse things to be.

He was sitting at his laptop a few hours later, working on his latest tech manual; a certification guide for Python coding, super exciting, when his doorbell rang. He hadn’t ordered anything except groceries in a couple of weeks, but he got up and went to the door, where the UPS guy was waiting for him with his DIAD. “Hey, Mr. Hale,” he said affably. “Keeping Amazon in business, huh?”

“Not to my knowledge,” replied Derek, but took the package, noting the return address, L. Hale, 47 Broad Street, Sacramento, CA, and sighing inwardly before adding, “But thank you, have a great day!”

“You too, sir,” said the driver, and all Derek could think was, “See? I talk to people!”

He closed the door and set the package on the counter, eyeing it as though it were ticking; knowing Laura, whatever was in it would be more dangerous and intrusive than a bomb.

He devoutly hoped Laura had not taken it upon herself to buy him any sort of “intimate” toy, because speculation on his social skills was one thing, but he could jerk off just fine by himself, thank you. If this were the case, he would have to smack her and no judge would blame him.

Derek slit open the tape with a paring knife, and then tugged the flaps open; inside was a small, boxed device, about the size of a cereal bowl, stamped with the dreaded words “Echo Dot 3 with Alexa.”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, why? Why?

Derek closed the box again, tucking in the flaps, and set the box by the door. He didn’t need some fake sweet ghost voice telling him to turn out the lights and lock the door. If it came to hearing voices, he’d go with the ones in his head over, “Derek. It’s five-thirty. Have you moved your bowels today?”

He couldn’t fathom people needing or wanting something like this, though. He understood being busy, even scattered, but that’s what pens and paper were for, or if you were a technocrat, your damn phone. Maybe he was just boring and old school, but his memory still worked fine, and until it didn’t, he didn’t need any creepy AI around him, monitoring his life. Freaking Laura, though – meddling older sister stereotype, much?

He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, then went and changed into a ratty t-shirt and shorts to go for a run; between being psychoanalyzed by Cora and getting a thinly-disguised push into a world he didn’t care for from Laura, he needed to get out.

He didn’t give the box another glance as he let himself out, took in a lungful of fresh air, and set off down the logging road behind the house.

~*~

Stiles was taken aback. Way, way aback. And was, consequently, affronted. Two excellent words that he had never applied to himself until today, but there was a first time for everything. He usually didn’t give a single damn about performance reviews and had assumed this one was a mere formality, but apparently not.

“What do you mean, I’m not contributing enough new ideas in team meetings?” It was hard to not shriek, but he managed. Barely. “All I do is talk and participate! Hell, you’ve told me to simmer down a number of times! You told me to shut up last week!”

Lydia Martin sighed and pushed her hair over her shoulder. “Stiles, you are a wonderful asset to this department, and you know that, I know that, everyone knows it. And yes, you do speak up in group settings, to the amusement and sometimes annoyance of all. I’m not disputing that, so calm down, please, and listen to what I’m saying.”

She took a breath. “This product, the next-gen Alexa is poised to be huge - the market for this device is booming, but there’s all kinds of competition on the horizon, and we can’t be complacent. You’re an innovative, creative thinker, but you haven’t spent much time or attention to this campaign, and we need you to. We need your brain, your intuition, your _ideas_. Give us your ideas, make them happen. You not only can think of new directions, but you have the skills to implement them as well. That’s what we need. And you haven’t been doing it. You’ve been coasting. We cannot coast – I won’t allow it. So you need to up your game, Stiles. I know you have it in you.”

She tapped the sheet that ranked an employee’s work as Needs Improvement/Meets Expectations/Exceeds Expectations; Stiles had never received anything but top marks in all categories cause, well, he was that good.

Now though, Stiles just gaped at her, then sat back; various replies coursed through his mind, but 99.9% of them would get him fired. He went with the final reply. “Okay.”

“Just okay?” Lydia eyed him, and Stiles looked back at her. “Yes. Okay. I will try harder. Is that all?”

She’d expected an argument, honestly, a few interestingly worded barbs, a protestation. But instead, she was getting an “okay,” and there was nothing much to say to that, was there?

“Yes,” she said, finally. “That’s all. You’re doing stellar work, just …”

“Not enough. Understood. I will go back to my desk and be more stellar. Stellar-rific.”

He nodded to her, stood up and left the office, looking composed, which lasted till he got to the bathroom, when he locked himself in the only stall and raged. Quietly, but raged. He sent several “what the actual fuck?” texts to Scott, his father, and his college roomie, Biff – yes, his name actually was Biff and yes, his family had a house in the Hamptons. Not even a rental – a _house_ house. And despite the moniker, Biff was a pretty solid dude.

And also, apparently bored, cause a few moments later, a return text. _What the actual fuck, indeed! Don’t they know you do the work of at least three-point seven competent people? Assholes. Come work with me and my dad. Sun, sailing, girls named Bitsy, boys named Boo. You know you want to._

Goddammit, it didn’t sound that bad. Maybe he should take Biff up on it, but he knew he’d spend his days sunburnt, probably drunk and possibly coked up. That was fine in college, but he’d promised his mom he’d make something amazing to give to the world and so here he was. 

Although was an overly intuitive piece of technology that further assured people they’d never have to talk to another human again and be just fine, really contributing something amazing? Or was he just adding to the urban decay rapidly spiraling humanity into depression and searing loneliness? Maybe she’d just wanted him to write a folk song or do sidewalk art or read to the blind. His mom hadn’t been super clear about her aims for him before she died. She’d mostly talked to the wall, her travel clock and asked for endless glasses of apple juice. He didn’t remember much about the rest of it all, and what he’d gleaned from Melissa, Scott’s mom and his mother’s hospice nurse, made him think he might be lucky after all.

He shook his head. A text from Scott. _You sound stressed. Skype me and we’ll smoke a bowl together tonight and watch Rick and Morty. You in?_

Stiles had to grin. He was all in for that, pretty much 24/7. 

To Biff: _You’re tempting me, brother. Maybe on vacation? Should I head east and land on your doorstep or your dinghy?_

He could almost hear the snort from Hudson Square. _If you land on my dinghy, we’ll have to have a talk about where this is all going, so no. Doorstep, backseat of the Miata, deck, dock, just not dick. Seriously, Slaw. You know, anytime. My mom wants you to teach her to make your Chicken Piccata de Napoli._

Slaw. SLAW. That was a perfect example of what a weekend of blow got you; a bestie who didn’t tell anyone your deepest secret, your heinous first name, but made a nickname out of it that you couldn’t refuse. 

_Your MOM wants me to teach her?_

_Well, Francesca. Frankie. The housekeeper, yanno?_

He did know. That house was run by a short Cuban lady who could outlast a thousand Communist uprisings and still fold a fitted sheet like a dream. Stiles feared her, and she liked it. And she also called him Slaw.

“Stilinski!” A thump on the door. “You dead in there? You got a girl in there?” Dunbar was obsessed with sex, more specifically bathroom sex. Toilet sex, shower sex, hot tub sex, you name it, he was into it.

“Maybe both,” said Lahey helpfully. “They’re pretty big stalls. He could have two girls in there. Do you?” He smacked the door with his hand. “Break it up!”

Stiles briefly wondered how far he’d get if he tried to give them both swirlies. If you took Dunbar by surprise, maybe; he was short and had a low center of gravity, and if you hit the trajectory just right … but Lahey, no. He was tall and stronger than he looked and very limber.

Not like Stiles imagined anything about that, cause he most emphatically did not fantasize about his coworkers, ever. Ever.

“Get the fuck away from my door, dudes,” he said, and reached to unlock it, pushing it open with his foot. “Can’t a boy have a moment to himself?”

“What do you think this is, Google headquarters? Do you see napping eggs anywhere? Free snacks?” Dunbar unwrapped a coconut Built bar and decimated it in two bites. “You stalked out of Boss Chick’s office and into the bathroom. You were either hit by the runs or you were mad. We gave you space, didn’t have to evacuate from gas, so figured you were pissed. “

“Well aren’t you the Sunshine Duo?” Stiles tried hard to not sound snappy and failed. Failed hard. “I’m okay. I’m just taking ten.”

“It’s been twenty.” Isaac was ever helpful, that asshole.

“More like twenty-three, actually,” added Dunbar, and flexed. Stiles didn’t think he could even help it anymore. Breathe, flex. Poop, flex. Give bad relationship advice, flex. Eat all the orange Jell-O in the cafeteria, flex. He kind of thought Dunbar could use a good beating, but he wasn’t in any shape to do it, and besides, Dunbar meant well. Mostly.

Stiles stalked out of the stall and went to wash his face and hands, with two helpful coworkers loitering in the background. This must be what hell was like, he thought. Really pissed off and feeling like punching a wall, in a bathroom with two well-meaning coworkers ready to dispense career advice, as well as random skin care advice. 

“Damn, Stilinski, you are pale,” said Dunbar, who had to stand on his tiptoes to look over Stiles’ shoulder. “You need some sun, my friend.”

“Some of us work for a living and don’t have time to frolic on beaches with dudes who bench-press other dudes,” grumbled Stiles. “I’d be the former. You can guess which one you’d be.”

Dunbar held up his hands. “Don’t get in a lather, Stilinski. But if you did, I have a Pour Hommes face wash that would do wonders for you. Rejuvenate, refresh – you’d be a new man.”

He beamed at his own wordplay, Lahey snorted into his hand and Stiles wished for a barbell to fall from the sky. “Thank you, Dunbar. I appreciate your concern for my skin, my gastrointestinal issues and my sanity. Really, I do. I am fine, I’m going back to my desk, and by fuck, I’m gonna be productive.”

“Good man!” Lahey clapped him on the back and Dunbar pounded his chest like a mini gorilla in solidarity and they all exited the bathroom to a few curious glances. Stiles could only imagine what they were thinking – easily, because he thought it every time he saw Lahey and Dunbar together. The little dude would have to climb Lahey like a tree.

Shaking off that image, Stiles filled his water bottle – emblazoned with AMAZON R&D across it’s shiny PABA-free surface – and sat back down at his desk, taking a breath. He didn’t know what kind of expression he had on his face, but everyone left him alone for the rest of the day. So maybe there actually was a God.

That night, he ate an enormous Firehouse Sub with extra sriracha sauce, wiped his fingers on his t-shirt and pulled up a list of common commands and responses from Alexa, culled with permission from millions of users. Well … Stiles _hoped_ they had permission, but he put nothing past Bezos and his flunkies. Or Lydia; more people were actually scared of her.

Most commands were pretty innocuous. 

_“Hey Alexa, remind me to call the doctor / call the vet / call the exterminator / pick up the kids at soccer / make cupcakes for soccer / stop and get an oil change.”_ Those were simple and there were many variations, some snarkier than others. Stiles particularly enjoyed one conversation where Alexa took the place of the go between. Instead of, “Ben, please tell your father he’s an inconsiderate asshole,” Stiles heard, “Alexa, please tell Jace that he’s a steaming mountain of turds and has a teeny dick,” followed by, “Alexa, please tell Amber that Sephora called and making her look good is above their pay grade.”

So people used Alexa for simple things, reminders, to turn on the lights, music, as a timer, as a GPS, all sorts of things. But as Stiles scrolled through the sound bites, he came across more and more where Alexa was actually, well, a friend. Not a great friend, but still.

_“Alexa, I feel so lonely and I don’t feel like anyone cares. Not even my mother cares.”  
“Would you like me to call your mother? Calling your mother now.”_

Or ...

_“Alexa, the girl I love doesn’t even want to look at me. Will anyone ever find me attractive?”  
“You are attractive. There are many stores in the area where you can buy a mirror.”_

Stiles rubbed his face; a lot of these snippets were from guys; guys who had no one else to talk to. Stiles knew damn well that there were just as many lonely girls out there, but it seemed to be a trend for men to have these devices to talk to. Some used Alexa, some Siri, some Cortana, but the end result was the same. It was a voice that cared, however peripherally.

So what if there was, well, a Bro-lexa? A Brolex? Okay, the word made him laugh, but what if there was a way to address some of the biggest loneliness and needing-to-talk issues? Was that too much intrusion? Or were they already about as intrusive as they could be?

As he listened to a couple fight about lack of sex via Alexa, he wasn’t sure.

The next morning, he went to legal, to a young paralegal he knew there, and asked for a copy of their policy on AI and what Alexa was and was not meant for, as well as any precedents from any court cases involving AI. The paralegal sighed heavily, but printed out what he had asked for, and dourly informed him that he had the equivalent of half a tree in his hands, and then silently offered him a coupon for a free tree to plant to make up for his sins. He took it. A little good karma, a little giving back to Mother Earth was never a bad thing.

He spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon reading and making notes, and when he was done, he thought he had a viable idea, and decided to start working on a prototype – at home, cause everyone here was nosy and this was his fucking idea.

Two weeks later of nonstop work and three PTO days, Stiles was ready, and asked Lydia for a meeting, which she made him wait two days for; he tried to not seethe, but was impatient, and the second he was in her office with the door shut, he said it. 

“Brolexa.”

She blinked. “Bro what?”

“Brolexa.” Stiles came and sat down and looked at her, leaning in. “You want Alexa to be the number one assistive AI in the world, right? To do so, we need to broaden her – its – horizons. Reminding someone to take their pills or walk Fido is fine. Setting reminders to tell your idiot husband to put the chicken in the oven and also that his sister is a bitch, is fine, if not nice. But this program I’ve written is intuitive. It actually listens and tries to help, be supportive, empathetic and all that shit.”

Before she could say anything, he raised a hand. “I checked it with legal. I read precedents. Brolexa won’t diagnose, it won’t judge, it will listen and be supportive. Ideally, people would have, you know, people for this, but let’s face it, we live in a virtual world and real-life people are problematic. Brolexa is nothing but love. Support, rather. A “You’re doing okay, you know?” type of thing.”

Lydia bit her lip. “I’m intrigued, but is it just for men? The title …”

“For now. This is a tiny pilot program I’m suggesting. 100 sim cards sent to 100 male users. We say it’s added memory or some shit like that. And it falls into the purview of gathering samples to see what Alexa is used for – I checked that too. And I know, I KNOW, it sounds creepy. But that data we already have is creepy. I have a sound bite of some dude trying to get Alexa to dirty talk to him while he, uh, is excellent to himself, as Bill and Ted would say.”

“Oh God.” She wrinkled her nose and grimaced.

Stiles sighed. “You didn’t even have to listen to it. I should get combat pay for hearing that guy beg Alexa to call him a dirty, filthy little boy.”

“No more, damn.” She leaned back, assessing him, and Stiles leaned back too, two opponents in a ring; he crossed his legs and smiled. Lydia could not help smiling back. “This is what I meant, Stiles. This is the kind of thing you can do. I need to think a little about how to implement this, though I think your idea for that, too, is just right. This could go really well or backfire spectacularly.” She looked at him. “I need a sample. I want to listen.”

“I have that. It’s in my voice though, so I don’t know what you want to do to change that. Maybe get some voiceover guy to do the phrases, but anyway, here’s a copy. Do not make a copy of this – I will know.” Stiles gave her a look. “This is my baby. You pushed me and this is the result, so it’s mine, win, lose, draw. Deal?”

Lydia respected Stiles more than any other programmer she’d ever worked with – for no one else would she agree to these kinds of terms, but for him, well, she’d risk it. She had never lost yet on one of Stiles’ ideas.

“Deal,” she said, extending her perfectly manicured hand. “I will listen, review, give you any notes and we will get this out before the third quarter. The male users are chosen at random, yes?”

“Yes. If a device has been shipped to them, they’re eligible. I’m eliminating highly androgynous names from the sample. No Morgans, Taylors, Hunters, Jamies, etc.”

“Smart. Okay. I will meet with you again Friday morning at nine and work this out.”

“All right. Thank you, Lyd,” he said, then corrected himself. “Ms. Martin.”

It was hard to believe this polished woman had been his group partner in MIT labs for four years, had eaten two day old pizza on the floor of his dorm room with him, cursed at algorithms with him and done body shots off their section leader, but it was one and the same. And "Lyd" still came easier than "Ms. Martin", but he showed respect. She had kicked ass here and made R&D her own.

She smiled – her real smile, not the professional one that people knew to fear. “Always Lyd to you, except in meetings. I’m really proud of you, Stiles, and I would never push you if I knew you couldn’t do it. You’re fucking amazing, and you know it. Sometimes you need to be reminded.”

That made him grin. “I had a pretty brilliant lab partner,” he replied, and got up, dropping his shoulders and leaving the office. God, he could use a beer right now, but a giant Diet Dr. Pepper would have to suffice and fuck the haters.

He left the building to get one, bypassing the cafe on his break, and exited into sunshine; who knew there was actual sun and fresh air outside of work?

Not for the first time did he wonder if he was really meant to sit in a cube farm and play with code all day – it was mostly fun, and his department was better than most at Amazon _because_ of Lydia but still, he was working for The Man. A tall, bald, nasty-pic sexting man, and okay, he really didn’t want to think about that, ever. He sat in the sun, stretched out his legs, sipped his slowly-killing-his-kidneys diet soda, and breathed deep.

~ * ~

Six weeks later, Derek was working in his yard, weeding, when his friendly postal worker waved a little package at him from the sidewalk, and he straightened up, conscious of the sweat, dirt and grime pretty much coating him from head to toe. “Hullo!” The worker greeted him, adding the tried and true, “Working in the garden, huh?”

And this is why Derek hated small talk, cause it was absolutely stupid. But he played the game, giving him a friendly smile. “Yeah, keeping on top of weeds. Do I need to sign for this?”

“Nope,” said the guy, and Derek wiped his hand on his jeans and took the small, flat package from Amazon, sighing, “Thank you.”

Fortunately, no more chit chat, and Derek took the package up, opened the door and tossed it on top of the box the Alexa had come in – still unopened, still unwanted. He kept meaning to package it all up and send it back, but his sisters were right about one thing – for Derek, out of sight was literally out of mind, and since it was tucked under the table by the door, he barely noticed it.

Laura, however, noticed it. Immediately, in fact, later that day as she walked in on one of her impromptu visits that made Derek want to scream. Yes, they were family. Yes, there were different rules for family (or so he was told) but a simple phone call seemed little enough to ask before you were descended upon by a storm named Laura. Derek was already simmering by the time she sailed through the door; her fiery Sebring convertible was like a harbinger of doom. He was pretty sure the Horsemen had upgraded from equines to sports cars, and here came the War, in a red chariot, no less.

“Hi Sweetheart!” she sang, choosing to not notice the seething Brother was doing. It was just north of his standard “What the fuck do you want?” expression that was pretty much his default setting. “You look like you got some sun, I’m jealous!”

Before Derek could reply, he was encompassed in hair that smelled like strawberries, clothes that smelled like Elizabeth Arden’s “Red Door,” and the telltale spearmint that Laura always had on her breath to disguise the fact that she was a secret smoker. He had no idea who she thought she was kidding, but it wasn’t worth arguing about. All the Hale kids had their vices. Derek’s was loaded nachos and being left the hell alone, but whatever.

Laura looked around. “The house looks good, Der,” she said approvingly. “I knew you’d get into fixing it up sooner or later and it looks great. I love the landscaping outside – you were always so great at that. You probably saved Mom and Dad thousands of dollars over the years with your designs and plans.”

This was typical Laura, thought Derek. So, SO annoying and presumptuous, but at the same time, loving and complimentary. It made it hard to treat her with the scorn he felt she richly deserved. “Thank you,” he said finally. “I’m enjoying working on it more than I thought I would.”

Her smile was knowing, and he grimaced. “So, what are you doing here, besides not calling first and interrupting me and planning to meddle in my life in some unwanted way?”

Laura raised a brow. “Well, that about sums it up … honey, I just wanted to see you, okay? You’re my little brother, I love you. I worry about you. I come, I meddle, you get mad, we interact, we hug it out and I leave, feeling like you’re doing all right. Is that so wrong?”

“Yes!” Derek rubbed his face. “You know this drives me batshit, and yet, you and Cory think you can just interfere whenever and I’m supposed to be grateful you care. I love you guys too, but I leave your asses alone to live your lives.”

“You do, but our asses would love you to interfere, but since you won’t, we have to do our share and yours too. So inconsiderate, Derek.”

She moved over to press her lips against his temple and stroke his hair. “So shaggy, sweetie, but I can give you a quick cut before I go tomorrow. What’s for dinner? Can we grill out?”

Derek stood there and didn’t honestly know whether to laugh or cry. His fucking sisters were going to push him over the edge into the screaming abyss one day, then yell after him for not calling more from Hell. Collect.

He counted. He breathed. He counted again, while Laura checked her phone and let Derek cool down, and when he spoke, he sounded resigned. “I have some chicken we could grill and some salad stuff. Will you make your special biscuits?”

“I would love to,” she said, giving him their mother’s smile, big and bright and Derek was done for, and knew it.

As she was packing up her purse the next day, Derek was leaning against the counter, feeling like he’d dodged a bullet; their short visit had been just the right amount of time to keep her connected and him from going nuts, and it had actually been fun. They’d grilled, talked, watched some Netflix documentary on the Fyre Festival and both been impressed at the lengths Andy King was willing to go to, to get water bottles released for participants. That was loyalty of the highest order, they agreed, and thought that dude deserved all the awards.

Laura had stayed up a little later than Derek to smoke on the porch and look at the stars, and when he had gotten up to make breakfast, nothing seemed amiss; he didn’t notice that the Amazon boxes were gone from under the table, and didn’t see them out near the garbage, since Laura, in a heroic act, had volunteered to take his garbage can to the curb. That alone should have roused a great deal of suspicion, but he was sated on biscuits and therefore, a bit slow-witted.

He hugged and cheek-kissed his sister goodbye, even waved, then returned to his house – it took half a day to discover that a piece of statuary had been moved from the dining room he used as an office and replaced with a small, round electronic device with a small blue light dot announcing its presence.

The Brolexa’s first experience with Derek Samuel Hale was to register a truly awe-inspiring string of curses, curses that would fry most electronic insides immediately, but Brolexa was no wimp, and stayed strong. And it was already hardwired into Derek’s wi-fi by techno wizard sister who was making sure no sibling tantrum could foil her plan to “help”.

She knew what she was doing, all the time. Derek called it interference and Laura called it staving off loneliness, which was toxic and which her brother did not deserve, had never deserved. And if she had to be sneaky, well then, she would. She’d known he wouldn’t install the device; she knew he’d forget about it, she knew it would be up to her. She had installed the accompanying sim card, accepting the more memory for Prime users (her) and turned it on. The rest, however, was up to Derek. Maybe he’d actually wind up enjoying the company.

And maybe not; nothing was ever simple with Derek.

~ * ~

The shipment of the sim cards that turned Alexa into Brolexa had gone smoothly, and a number of people had reacted to it online, and not negatively. A few had said that they would have been okay with knowing outright that it was a new product, and Lydia had crafted a response about blind testing and offered to have the customers send it back and get a gift card if they felt duped. No one did.

She reported this to Stiles over lunch, or rather, by sitting on his workspace in his cubicle and munching a P3; that passed for lunch in her world, while Stiles was eating a taco salad as big as his head and already wishing he’d bought two. “So, people are liking it?” he said, trying to sound detached and not gleeful, and failing. “Who did you get to do the voiceover?”

“Well, we thought about Neil Patrick Harris, cause bros, you know, but he was too recognizable, so we went with a pretty unknown actor who does a lot of voice work. I’ll send you a clip.” She finished the cashews and licked the salt off her fingers, bringing several passing interns to their knees, and making Stiles roll his eyes and hand her a napkin. 

“Very cool, I want to hear. See how it aligns up with what I said in my demo.”

Lydia nodded, then blinked. “Oh! About that … somehow someone in shipping screwed up and lost one of the cards – we were on deadline, so I just grabbed one of your copies from your drawer,” she said, and Stiles stopped, put the taco bowl down.

“You what?”

“Don’t get shirty, Stiles. You had like three cards in here for backup, I grabbed one. It’s fine.”

“Lydia, listen to yourself! I said I didn’t know who you’d used. I would have known had you given me copies. You did not, ergo, what was in my drawer _were_ my demos. You sent some poor asshole me! Or a version of me! And not a bugless version either. I got a little crazy on those!”

Lydia eyed him. “When you say “a little crazy,” what exactly does that mean? I know you well enough to be nervous about the answer, but I require specific examples.”

Stiles’ hands were in his hair, tugging – and spreading sour cream everywhere. “I … I was personal. Like, if a guy was talking about deep issues like say, sexual identity, I shared my experiences. Or if he was upset or grieving over family, I shared what it’s like to grow mostly up without a mom. I was me, Lydia.”

She took a breath, blew it out slowly. “So, in other words, you were snarky, full of pop culture references, tech geeky, adolescent and deeply inappropriate.”

“Basically, yes. Oh, my fucking God.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, shit. Shit, shitfuck, shit fucking-fuck and fuckity.”

Despite the situation, she had to laugh. “Were you like that on the card?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, I’m sure there’s a market for it, but we need to find that card and switch it with a standard prototype. I personally think you are beyond wonderful, but you are an acquired taste. I say that with love.”

Stiles pulled his hands away from his head, and Lydia shook her head, grabbed a napkin and wiped the worst of the sour cream and taco sauce out of his hair, then tossed the napkin. “I’ll contact shipping. Each demo was numbered and scanned, so we’ll find it. In the meantime, watch the feedback – we might hear from this guy sooner rather than later.”

“It’s been a week – wouldn’t he have said something already?”

“You would think so but maybe not. Maybe he hasn’t used Alexa or installed the card or maybe he’s on vacation, works away from home … it could be a number of reasons. Don’t panic. We’ll get it back or else maybe he’ll like it. You never know. Maybe you really hit on something.”

She stood up and smoothed her blouse and skirt, tossed her hair over her shoulder, patted his head and strolled back to her office, while Stiles watched her in disbelief. How the hell was she so calm when the situation was … well, this?

But that was why Lydia was the boss, because she never panicked and was always working all the angles.

He was tempted to go into the bathroom and rage, but he was afraid of being stalked by LaBar, as he had grown to term Lahey and Dunbar, who had been inseparable lately. He could not pee alone to save his life these days and although the Pour Homme face wash was life-changing, he didn’t think he could stand any more personal improvement today.

So, instead, he took ten deep breaths and then wrapped up the rest of his lunch and stuck it in his mini-fridge, a nice little feature that senior cube-farmers had here and grabbed a Diet Mountain Dew. He wished he was senior enough to add vodka to it, but that was another two pay levels up, he’d heard. Lydia had an actual wet bar in her office.

He unlocked his bottom right desk drawer and extracted the demo cards; there were four numbered cards, and #4 was missing. He frantically tried to think what version of himself he’d been on #4 and was horribly afraid that was the Stiles that drank a fifth of gin and then proceeded to talk about the perils of internet chat roulette. Oh God, please don’t be that one, he thought. Be the one that talked about Aeschylus and self-determination and why Cartoon Network needed to bring back Ed, Edd n Eddy. Or the one that had just seen Cirque du Soleil and was wondering how limber the human body actually was and posited ideas about how that could be proven.

Or no, maybe not that one either, but he was pretty sure that was Stiles #3. He’d have to listen. But he realized he was too antsy to stay in his cube, so he went in, told Lydia he didn’t feel well – he really didn’t – and she advised that he lay off the hot sauce, then watched him bolt for the elevators as though all the devils in hell were chasing him for his chicken piccata recipe.

Of course, she knew the real reason – she knew Stiles well. And honestly, she should probably be more worried, but that card had gone to one person. One. Amazon was global, overreaching. No matter which Stiles was currently residing in some poor dude’s Alexa, it would add something to his life. Maybe even something life changing.

Stiles made it home in pretty much record time; the lights were in his favor, traffic was light, and no one questioned the crazy guy running down the sidewalk in a light rain. This was Seattle and everything was cool, man. Even the drug dealers sauntered.

He dumped his backpack and hoodie next to the door, fished out his phone, and headed for his desk, his geek-lord setup of dual screens, external hard drive, speakers that could pierce the veil of space and time, and a big bowl of Smarties. He woke the computer – it was past noon, after all – and brought up the “Stiles Files” and the sub folder “Brolexa”. He turned on the tracking function he’d coded into the demos so that if the card was activated, it would show up on his desktop as a chat window

His fingers paused above the space bar, and he took a breath, relaxing his shoulders, his jaw, unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth like the chill videos told him to, and then licked his lips and opened Stiles #1 – sim card #1. And listened. And okay, maybe he laughed once or twice. Maybe three or more times. This was the gin one.

~ * ~

Derek rarely laughed; his sisters saw it as a character defect, while Derek saw it as a measuring tool; if it was amusing enough, he’d laugh, and if not, it was just more bullshit to slog through. He saw himself as a realist, and realists didn’t spend their time giggling over internet memes, videos of cats jumping on toddlers and knocking them on their asses or watching some clown swallow their toes on “America’s Got Talent”. He just didn’t find that stuff amusing.

His sisters, however, found all that crap hysterical, and he’d finally had to set their email addresses to go directly to spam because they were sure that he must find it secretly riotous too.

He did not.

He was stuck, though, on this day, around 4 pm in the afternoon; he was at his table/desk and rubbing his eyes periodically, trying to refocus. The coding manual he’d contracted to write was boring, and he knew it. Usually, he tried to inject a little extra readability, a little bit of humanity, even humor (of sorts) into his work because he knew full well that 95% of the people in this world would find any programming language a complete snooze to read. Hell, whenever he couldn’t sleep, he opened his bedside C++ certification book and started to read – he’d now been on page nine for four months and had never slept better.

Derek stretched, closed his eyes, then opened them and looked around the room; the small device with the ever-glowing blue dot was where it had been for a week now. He’d thought about smashing it with a brick, but that would make a mess and cleaning was already his seventy-eighth favorite thing to do, and it wasn’t like he was using it, so his information wasn’t being secretly transmitted to satellites or anything. Even if it was, he had a feeling anyone listening would be like, “Get a load of this guy – a block of cheese would be more engaging than him. This is a life?”

He snorted and looked over at the device, and decided, what the hell. “What would make someone want to read a programming book?”

No answer – he rolled his eyes and tried again with the proper etiquette. “ALEXA, what would make some newb want to read a programming book?”

“Brolexa” flickered, and a voice emitted the following sentence. “Nothing, dude. Programming is some boring-ass shit.”

Stiles blinked as the chat window lit up and he read the question and response as the voice of the customer entered his earbuds and the tracking number appeared above the chat. Oh shit – this was Stiles #4, the nihilist with a dark sense of humor and a taste for Pratchett novels, Captain Morgan’s dark rum and endless takeout from PF Chang. Fucking great.

On the other side of the screen, possibly in another dimension, Derek listened and then sat up a little as a decidedly male voice summed up what all programmers knew to be fact but dared not speak.

“Uhm, excuse me?” he said, and eyed the device. “Did you just say programming was boring?”

The disembodied, but strangely warm voice replied, “Hell yes – the endless lines of white symbols, the endless scrolling through pages of crap that basically just creates a box around a block of text, and God forbid you make a mistake. It’s like trying to find your contact lens in an ocean. Or like lights on a Christmas tree – you know, one goes out, they all go out?”

Derek started to speak, paused, shook his head. “You’re not wrong but … you’re Alexa. Not Alex. And since when does Alexa say 'shit'?”

Stiles wondered what his answer to that would be – he was a little afraid and didn’t remember. Recording this had been a night spent with The Captain, and no one remembered those nights without an STD and a bad tattoo in an unfortunate spot. 

“I am a specialized version of Alexa, specifically for guys,” said the device, and Stiles raised a brow, because that was coherent of him. “As such, I am programmed to respond in a way most males can appreciate. And sometimes I may respond with a curse word. If that annoys you, you can turn off that function.”

You could? That was news to Stiles. The Captain took no prisoners, man.

“No, that’s okay,” said Derek cautiously. “So, you’re a dude. A Dude-lexa.”

“Last time I checked I was, indeed, a dude. And it’s Brolexa. Get it?”

Derek pondered a moment. “Is this Laura’s idea of a joke? Did my sister put you up to this?”

Stiles blinked, but fortunately, Brolexa was up to the challenge. “No, this is a prototype sent to 100 male owners of Alexa, and it was done at random based on traditionally male names. So no, no joke.”

Derek rubbed his face, because this was weird. “So, you’re designed for guys and … that’s kind of weird. Is there one for women?”

“Not yet. If this is successful, we will attempt a pilot program for females as well.”

Stiles blew out a breath and checked the data; Derek Hale, 29, a resident of Beacon Hills, just north of Sacramento, and 100 miles, +/- from where he himself had grown up. Huh.

Derek was speaking again, and he had a nice voice, thought Stiles. A little raspy so either he smoked two packs a day or never spoke to anyone, or both. “You really think programming is boring?”

Fuck yeah, I do it for a living, thought Stiles, but Brolexa carried on. “I think it’s interesting if you have the patience and like to solve problems, but for most people, it would put their teeth to sleep. It should be used as a surgical anesthetic.”

Derek laughed, surprising him. “Especially C++.”

“Or Cobalt. Kill me now.”

Another snort. “So uhm, you also act like a regular device and don’t just dispense programming humor?”

“I do. I can make grocery lists, remind you to get the dog wormed, though, gross, and tell you to get a birthday card for a sibling or that you need to take your meds. All-purpose, you know? I can also give you book or music recommendations and tell you where to find holiday pumpkin spice lattes in August.”

Stiles thought fleetingly that anyone who received this device, probably wished it had a “Shut the hell up, will ya?” switch, much like those who knew him personally wished he had one as well. 

“Well, that seems thorough,” said Derek after a moment. “Maybe a little invasive.”

Stiles wanted to shout, “Well, you ordered me!” but couldn’t cause a) Derek _hadn't_ (apparently, since he’d mentioned a sister and a joke of some kind) and b) no one had actually _ordered_ him, he’d just sort of showed up on their doorstep and who didn’t like free upgrades? No one was who.

He typed. “I’m not meant to be invasive, dude. I am here to assist, and it is your choice as to whether you wish me to or not.” That seemed nicer than, “Then don’t fucking use me, dipshit,” which, much as Lydia loved him, would not go over well. He listened to Brolexa relay his message and really wished the device had a camera, then thought better of it. He would have then been privy to video of the frustrated stockbroker slapping himself with a plastic cutting board and begging Alexa to punish him, and just no. All the Captain Morgan in the world couldn’t blot that image out.

“Yeah, you’re right, sorry,” said Derek and then facepalmed. He was apologizing to a device that he hadn’t asked for, bought, hooked up or planned to use. Maybe he really did need to get out more.

“It’s fine,” said Brolexa. “Is there anything you currently need assistance with that is not work-related or are you good?”

“No, thank you,” said Derek, politely enough. “I will go back to my boring-ass programming manual and plod on. Thanks.” And then added, awkwardly. “I’m good.”

Stiles sat back and flexed his fingers, popping the middle one at the joint. Well. He either wrote the manuals or did actual programming, and either way, Stiles pitied him. Sure, he was also a programmer, but for him, it was a puzzle that he enjoyed. Plus, he was given a lot of leeway, courtesy of his boss, the formidable Ms. Martin, and he was good. Really good, and therefore, paid pretty damn well for his efforts. But many programmers were just miserable nit pickers who hated all things living and dead and he hoped Derek Hale 29, of Beacon Hills CA was not one of them.

After a few minutes, he got up, got a beer – it was 3 pm, which meant 6 pm in NYC, so fuck it – and processed the information he had at hand. This guy had received the 1-in-100 chance card that happened to be his personal demo. Stiles could have him contacted and ask him to swap out the wild card in the device for a proper one and save himself, Lydia, and ultimately, Amazon from what was sure to be embarrassment, loss of reputation, and possibly a lawsuit when Captain Morgan, the Nihilist ultimately offended one Mr. Hale. That was one option. Another one was to not do anything and let Brolexa the Helpful Elf counsel and guide Mr. Hale through the travails of daily life, hoping at all times that the advice/assistance was reasonable, helpful and sane, rather than profane. That seemed a little stressful, frankly, and Stiles did not trust the #4 version of himself at all. Not even a little bit. But to be fair, he didn’t trust the other four versions of him, either.

He rubbed his face and considered how to proceed. Should he tell Lydia he’d found it? If he did, she would no doubt advocate replacement, which would honestly be the simplest of all outcomes, if the most boring. But if the guy had to replace it, would he? Would he even bother? That would reduce the data collection worth of this experiment, and Stiles had more than a vested interest in this project. And if he was honest with himself (and if you couldn’t be honest with yourself, you were pretty screwed), he kind of wanted to see how this played out.

He searched the data banks he’d used to cull words and phrases to play with in his research, but there were none from Derek Hale, which made sense if this was a gift, but it would have been helpful in crafting responses, which then led to a bigger problem. If he had to augment his responses with customized chat replies, how the hell was he ever going to get any work done ever again? He texted Lydia.

_Is there a time limit on this trial?_

A moment later, a text back. _We were thinking 90 days – that should be enough time to gauge whether the program is being accepted and calculating results, positive or negative._

Shit. Three months? He was going to have to monitor this for _three months?_

Another text from Lydia. _Are you all right? You didn’t go home and crawl under your nerd console and cry, did you?_

Damn that girl, he thought – he’d considered that very idea. Maybe he needed a Costanza Cubby of his own under his home desk. _I did not, but thanks for your concern, and also, stop reading my mind, it’s annoying._

A series of winky and smiley faces followed, and Stiles groaned; emojis were the lowest form of communication and the world was going to hell. He did however, text back a beer emoji and a koala bear, just to keep her on her toes. But she knew him. 

_Australian beer, huh? Did you break out the Tooheys, or are you slumming it with Foster’s?_

Stiles read this, then looked around – he wouldn’t put it past her to have cammed his place right the hell up and be watching his every move. The Stiles Show. Unlike the Truman Show, this series had nudity, cursing, and a lot of pork rinds and beer cans that figured prominently. He sighed.

_Tooheys. What am I, a savage? But okay, thanks for the info._

He hoped that would be the end of it, but no. Another text. _Did you find the right demo card? Is it okay? Is it the gin one? Please say no. You’re a beast when you’re drinking gin._

He really was, thought Stiles, and smiled. _Yes, I did, yes, I think it’s okay, and no, it’s not the gin one. When I have Bombay Sapphire and lemons, nothing is sacred._

_How well I know. Okay. See you in the morning. Ciao._

Stiles set down his phone and then reviewed the conversations he’d had with her today. He might have a slight drinking problem, he decided, then opened another Tooheys to ruminate on that subject, keeping the chat window open.

Apparently, Derek Hale was either deeply engrossed in his work, YouTube, Tinder, etc. or was pondering the sudden invasion of technology into his life, because there was no activity for a few hours, during which Stiles played Dishonored, ate a stuffed-crust pizza – it had onions, peppers and mushrooms, so healthy vegetable win – and Face-Timed with Biff, who had the nerve to call him from a club in which clothing above the waist was clearly optional. 

“You’re an asshole,” he told Biff, “Truly. Why would you do this to me?”

“Cause I looove you,” sang Biff, then grinned. “This could be your life, Slaw. This, right here. You could have the tan of a lifetime, all the beer you can drink, and all this.”

“I have beer,” said Stiles defensively and held up his bottle of Tooheys – well, his third or fourth bottle, he had no idea – and Biff laughed at him.

“You do know that just drinking Australian beer is not gonna magically produce Chris Hemsworth in your living room, right?”

“I know that,” replied Stiles, a little defensively. “And it doesn’t have to be Chris; I’d settle for Liam, but still, not the point. You call me from a nearly naked club? Don’t you think my life sucks enough already?”

“Slaw, seriously. Ditch this coding bullshit and come out to the coast; this could be your life!”

A string of expletives from the other side of the screen cracked Biff up and he had the courtesy to step outside to have a smoke while they talked. “So, dude, did you figure out your problem, be brilliant and rub it in Lydia’s face?”

“Sort of,” said Stiles, and Biff sighed heavily. 

“Lydia. Still gorgeous?”

“More gorgeous. She routinely makes interns cry and they love it, and she is universally envied and feared, so she’s living her best life.”

“She always had it all figured out. I still can’t believe you and she didn’t, you know, rub things in each _other’s_ faces.”

Stiles scratched his chin. “Dude, she’s not my type. And more importantly she’s my friend. I know you’re bitter as fuck cause you tried to rub things on her for four years and got shot down every single time.”

“I am, I really am,” sighed Biff. “But I gave it the old college try, as they say, and now have moved on. Her name is Muffy. Do you love it?”

“Muffy. MUFFY?” Stiles exploded into laughter, the entire screen filled with his wide-open mouth, like a snapchat filter gone rogue. “Oh my God, for real?”

“For real! She lives in cutoffs and a bikini top and likes old horror movies and snorkeling naked. She can drink me under the table and restored a 1974 Firebird from YouTube videos. She’s my goddamn dream girl, no lie.”

“You lucky bastard,” managed Stiles. “Seriously man, good for you.” He calmed down then, taking another swig of beer and then seeing the chat window bar turn red. “Shit, I gotta go, bro. I’ll call you soon. Go cruise with your Bikini Babe.”

They flipped each other off, as bros did, and Stiles ended the call, looking at the chat window and getting ready to type.

“Alex … Brolexa,” said Derek, catching himself. “Any recommendations for adding a touch of oh, unexpectedly fun information to a programming manual?”

Well, this was Stiles’ wheelhouse. “I personally would add random illustrations. Stick figures work well, as long as they are not doing inappropriate things.”

Derek squinted at the device. “What kind of inappropriate things might they be doing?”

Stiles typed. “Darkly humorous things, as befit the mind of a programmer who has been conditioned to expect nothing but frustration, disappointment and existential pain.”

Derek was standing at his counter, eating yogurt and almost choked. “That seems oddly specific to the situation,” he replied. “You seem to have a large repository of knowledge regarding both programming and the psychology of programmers in general.”

Stiles paused. “My prototypical human counterpart also has experience in your chosen subject and so can feel your pain.”

“Ah, I see,” said Derek, having recovered and now dabbing yogurt off his shirt. “Any ideas on getting a yogurt stain out of cotton?”

“Just rub a little extra detergent on the stain before you toss it in the washer.” This was easier than he’d thought. He could do this. He just had to determine this dude’s sleep patterns so he knew when he had to be available to shore up his demo. Fortunately, they were in the same time zone, or Stiles would have had to choose Option A, asking the guy to return the demo before global annihilation on a Stilesian scale occurred.

He couldn’t ask that, however, could only respond, and Stiles was actually glad. He did feel a little bit like he was too involved here, but it was just this one person and unless prompted to engage in conversation, it’s not like Brolexa could just start a conversation about love, life, and deep-dish pies v. thin crust, worthy a topic as that might be. He decided to do some digging.

“Are there specific hours you wish me to be available to do your dark bidding?” He paused, then kept on. “Obviously, Brolexa is at your disposal 24/7, but if there is a schedule that you follow, I will be sure to be on my A-game at those times.”

Smooth, he thought. He could do this. He had seniority, leeway, and pictures of Lydia doing bong hits with who he was pretty sure was Wiz Khalifa, so he could rearrange his schedule for 90 days. Easy.

“Are electronic devices prone to dropping down to B and C games?” asked Derek, still dabbing at his shirt, then giving up and taking it off altogether. “Isn’t the benefit of a device v. a live person that the device is always on top of things, never tired, never grumpy, never less than calmly rational?”

Damn, he had a good point. “I meant that as a casual conversation starter,” he typed and Derek squinted again at the device – he really should be wearing his glasses, if he could only find them.

“I see. Well, I’m not a chatty sort of guy,” he said, washing his hands. “I get up early, I go to bed early and when I’m working, I don’t say much because what is there to say?”

“There are endless topics in this world to converse on,” Stiles typed. “I’m sure if you feel the need to expand your horizons, I have options for you.”

“Well, that’s the issue. I don’t,” said Derek. “Which is why my sister, who refuses to believe that I am happy just being me, bought me an intrusive electronic device, hard wired it into my home system while I slept, then sped off into the night. Well … day. She left about 10 AM, which seems about the right time for the devil to leave to avoid city rush hour traffic.”

Stiles paused, typed. “Is she literally the devil? Horns, hooves, a trail of fire following her footsteps?”

Derek snorted inelegantly. “I think her physical form is just a vessel, but no, no fire.”

“Ah, like Castiel on Supernatural.” Stiles nodded and Brolexa did too, after a fashion.

Derek rubbed his beard. “I’ve never watched Supernatural, so I will take your word for it.”

Stiles was glad Brolexa couldn’t literally gasp, cause seriously? Who didn’t watch Supernatural? Who didn’t know that angels were dicks, pie was God, and also, Chuck was God? Who’d never dreamed of a turducken sandwich attacking you in a semi-psychotic rage?

Dear God, this guy needed his help. He typed, “I would recommend it, my dude. It’s a great monster show that is tempered by humanity and explores all the archetypes with snark and wit. Also, the cast is pretty damn good looking.”

Hmm, maybe he shouldn’t have said the last part. He had no idea what this guy’s orientations and preferences were, although he could assume – yes, he knew it was a bad idea – that he identified as male, based on the name, and the voice was definitely male. But for all Stiles knew, this guy lived with a girlfriend who had not yet made an appearance, or for that matter, a boyfriend. Maybe they worked out of the house all day and at any moment, a new voice would ask him a question.

And was it really, really odd that he kind of hoped not, and hoped that he would only have to talk to Derek? It was, right?

Jesus, maybe _he_ should be the one getting out more.

“Well, a pretty cast of actors is a plus,” said Derek noncommittally. “If you’re going to put in the time to watch a series, it’s nice to have something nice to look at.”

“Right?”

Derek walked over to the device and looked it over, picking it up and turning it around in his hands, thinking, then set it down. As much as he hated how sneaky Laura had been, this gadget wasn’t a bad thing, he decided. It was even kind of amusing, but he had no intention of relying on it for anything. He did fine on his own, always had.

Stiles had no idea what Derek was doing during this pause; he was getting up to run to the bathroom and get a fresh beer on the way back, so that’s all he could account for. And he had to remember that he didn’t have to reply to everything – Brolexa had been programmed to be helpful with or without his personal, moment by moment input. It might actually be more helpful without him. He’d find out later, one way or the other.

There was minimal interaction for the reminder of the day; Derek did give the device a shopping list, which struck Stiles as exceedingly healthy; not even a bag of Fritos made an appearance, though liquor did, so there was that. Liquor was always on his own shopping list.

He downloaded the chat program that he’d modified for this particular project onto a thumb drive to take to work the next day, cause he was going to try to do both – be the voice of reason for Derek Hale, and the voice of insanity for Stiles Stilinski and the Amazon R&D department.

~ * ~

Fortunately or unfortunately, sleep had never come easily for Stiles, so despite four hearty ales, most of a pizza and a late bedtime, Stiles was still up a little before 6 AM and in the shower by 6, grabbing a bagel and coffee by 6.30 and at his desk by 6.50 AM. Lydia came in at seven, as did a few others like him, and the rest straggled in sometime before 9 AM. Theoretically, Stiles could leave at 3.30 PM, but he rarely did, mostly cause despite his pissing and moaning, he liked his job. Loved it, really, although he knew that if this department were run by anyone else but Lydia, he couldn’t take it. He’d seen other departments and their Night of the Living Dead employees and he knew that wasn’t for him. He was lucky that Lydia had recruited him literally at graduation and brought him with her. He didn’t want to be management - not now, not ever. He wanted to sit in his geek-o-sphere and work on his projects, and never did he appreciate that freedom more than today.

He unpacked his bag, inserted the thumb drive into his machine and downloaded the program, password protected it to the nth degree, then opened it. Nothing yet. 

He ate his bagel, drank half his coffee and scanned news, Instagram and Twitter, then slipped his earbuds in and accessed his iTunes, getting into his day. So into it, actually, that when Lydia pulled out one of his earbuds to get his attention, he screamed. Shrilly, at that.

Around them, heads popped up, and all Stiles could imagine was a giant mallet descending from the sky for a very deserving game of Whack-A-Geek. He waved at everyone, and yelled “Spider, no biggie!” while Lydia rolled her eyes and pulled a rolling chair over to his cube. 

“Jesus don’t scare me like that Lyd!” he hissed, and she shrugged - she was wearing Chanel today, head to toe and smelled like what Stiles imagined the afterlife smelled like, if you’d been a really, really good person.

“Sorry, I spoke to you three times, but you were off in Stilinskivania, where the sky is purple, the sea is pink and chimps serve drinks on unicycles,” she said, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “So, any results yet?”

Stiles hummed. “It depends on what you mean by results.”

“I mean are there any demonstrable moments of interaction between your prototype and the human talking to it,” she said patiently, and Stiles made an ohhhh sound. 

“Well, in that case, yes. I went home, accessed the program, and found the demo - #4 - and hooked up a chat program I modified so I could hear his comments and questions and respond if Brolexa didn’t have a good reply. I did a little better than I thought, though,” he said with some pride. “I think Brolexa can handle most of the work and this way I can check in for the heavy lifting.”

Lydia thought, then groaned. “#4 is the nihilistic rum-swiller isn’t it?”

Stiles blinked at her, then grinned. “Yeah. Hey, at least it wasn’t gin. Or Jack and Coke. Or Stoli and bad Russian accents.”

She eyed him, thought about making a comment, discarded it for another time. “All right, so you had a conversation - can I see? Can you bring it up?”

“I can just tell you about it,” said Stiles, feeling defensive. “I wasn’t inappropriate.”

Lydia leaned back. “I didn’t say you were,” she said quietly. “I’m interested, okay? I’m not here to meddle, but it’s a pilot program and I have due diligence standards I need to follow too.”

She was right and he knew it, so moved over so she could scoot in and started from the top, letting her scroll down as necessary; she laughed over the description of the sister, and shook her head over Supernatural. “I can just imagine your horrified intake of air over that,” she commented, and Stiles grinned.

“You know me so well.”

“I really do.” She finished reading and leaned back again. “That seemed to go all right. He’s a little reticent but I think he’ll warm up to the device, and you. Are you going to continue to physically monitor interaction? How are you going to manage that?”

“Well,” said Stiles. “Yes. Only because he has the wild card, and that’s why I asked you about the time limit, so I could plan. He’s in our time zone, thank God, and you saw that I asked about a schedule, which was kind of dumb of me, but he let it go. But it seems like I can cover most of the time he might be active between having the program here and at my apartment. I’m basically only losing transit time.”

“What about errands?” asked Lydia. “What about getting away from work, hanging out with your friends, relaxing? You’re putting yourself on call for 90 days, Stiles. That isn’t sustainable.”

“It’s my prototype, Lyd. I’m responsible and if that means my life is a little upended for a bit, well, it’s not a big price to pay if it results in a popular new addition to an already huge product, right?”

She looked unconvinced, nibbling on the inside of her lip, her business and personal sides waging war in her brain. Finally, she took a breath. “Carry on,” she decided, “but I’m going to check in with you frequently and if you start sounding/looking overwhelmed, I’ll make you back off. Yes, this is important, yes, it is very cool and thoughtful, but so are you. You are all those things and I value you more than quarter-end numbers, okay?”

He smiled at her, and she smiled back, touching his arm gently. “Buy you your fifth coffee of the day?”

“I’m on my second, so I’ll hit you up at lunch,” he promised, and she got up and wheeled her chair away, looking over her shoulder at her friend, who was brilliant, funny, and yet so fragile too. Those demos were him, all of him - it was though he’d split up all the Stiles and digitally immortalized them, and she wondered how much of Brolexa was born out of his own loneliness.

Her assistant scurried up to her to remind her of a conference call, and she reluctantly went back to her space to make the switch from friend to Boss Lady.

~ * ~

The first week of the project almost convinced Stiles that he wasn’t necessary at all; he’d heeded Scott’s - of all people! - advice and tried to be hands-off on the small stuff. His demo could easily handle the small things like reminders, turning lights on or off, playing a song, adding soymilk to the grocery list. The soy alone almost made him abandon ship, but when no tofu followed, he breathed easier. Maybe the guy was just lactose intolerant.

He spent a lot of time wondering what this guy looked like; he was able to surmise a few things from the shopping list. He used your basic shampoo, Suave, in coconut mango, he shaved with Gillette razors, used Nivea shaving soap. He brushed with Crest Optimum White toothpaste. He didn’t appear to smoke - no cigarettes on the list, although most people had no trouble remembering their vices, so that wasn’t a sure thing. He drank a lot of water but liked the occasional Coke or Sierra Mist so he wasn’t a health freak or anything.

Stiles found that Alexa could access past Amazon orders, which he both liked and didn’t like; it was good for data purposes, but he felt like a creepy little gnome behind a speaker who knew that Derek ordered protein supplements for weight lifting, subscribed to WIRED and had bought (and presumably lost) four phone cases in the last year alone. Derek’s purchases were fairly tame, but Stiles thought about the probable lists of some of the guys they’d data-mined, like the guy who enjoyed flagellating himself with cutting boards, pizza paddles and flat pasta-drainers. He knew he’d never look at a colander the same way again.

His iTunes were more fun though; Stiles found old-school Johnny Cash on there, some Sinatra, but also Taking Back Sunday, All-Time Low, Imagine Dragons and - and this filled Stiles with glee - Ariana Grande’s “Thank U Next.” There was some Taylor Swift, some Ed Sheeran, a few country bands Stiles had never heard of, and he crafted his own rec list, busily writing down titles, in case it ever came up. He’d rec some Hozier, Father John Misty and George Harrison and okay, Lady Gaga. You had to have Gaga. It was like, imperative or something.

The second week was much like the first, and though Stiles wasn’t bored, he wasn’t sure that this was a product for everyone. Either Derek was really busy or, well, just didn’t talk. He’d mentioned that, right?

Stiles still found time to eat, drink, drink more, shower, go to work, fuck around with Lahey and Dunbar, watch an MMA fight at a bar, but he was always on alert for the questions that Brolexa couldn’t answer.

Week Three was shaping up to be about the same, and although he had recced several shows to Derek, he wasn’t sure he was watching them, which was a bummer, cause it would give Brolexa an opening. Or him an opening. Oh hell, they were the same thing at this point.

But near the end of Week Four, things started to pick up and Stiles learned a whole lot about Derek, and subsequently, the bro-part of Brolexa was born. For example, he found that Derek liked baseball, specifically, the New York Yankees, which Stiles, as a Mets fan, found intolerable, and said so, to which Derek replied with scorn, and stats – but not as many stats as Stiles (and therefore, Brolexa) had available. They both found football overrated but admitted to getting caught up in basketball’s March Madness. They both appreciated the swinging sounds of the Brat Pack, and agreed that Dean Martin’s “That’s Amore,” was impossible to not sing along to. Stiles found that Derek had a secret – he could sing, and he wasn’t bad. And he tended to crank up his iTunes and sing along to pretty much everything when he was working around the house. Derek liked dark roast coffee, long baths and old movies.

So did Stiles. And when he suggested that Derek add pink Mr. Bubble to his shopping list for use in said long baths, Derek laughed, and Stiles felt an unexpected warmth in his stomach – he’d made Derek laugh.

On Week Five, Derek actually listened to the recs that Stiles made for him with regard to shows, movies and books, and ordered two of the books Stiles suggested, and downloaded an album Stiles had enthusiastically endorsed. He seemed to be regarding Brolexa in a friendly light, and even made random, toss off comments that turned into conversations of sorts between the two of them. Stiles found he’d much rather respond to Derek than play his video games, write code or watch “Fargo.” He even preferred Derek’s conversation to surfing RedTube and Pornhub, and he hadn’t thought that was even possible.

By Week Six, Stiles was more than pleased with how this was going, how well it already had gone, and reported as much to Lydia, who was also excited and rewarded him by returning the PTO days he’d spent writing the program. Stiles also told Scott that things were going great, as well as his father, and Biff, who seemed skeptical but told “Slaw” there was always a dinghy back East with his name on it.

But at the end of Week Six, something happened that changed everything.

~ * ~

“Derek!” Cora’s voice was loud through the phone. “Bro, I’m like half an hour away and I wanna see you. Can we come and visit and crash at your house tonight? We’re on our way to Big Sur and I miss you. Can we?”

Derek had been deep in a difficult-to-explain part of his manual, and his sister jolted him out of his groove, so he was already irritated by the time she began to speak, and he had to stop, breathe, breathe, breathe before he could respond. “We? More than you? This is kind of short notice, Cor, and I’m in the middle of a rough part of the book.”

Her tone immediately became wheedling. “I know it is, and I’m sorry. We just decided to do this, and our plan takes us near Beacon Hills. You’ve promised me a bunch of times that you’d visit me at Northern Cal, but you haven’t. Sorry, but I miss you.”

Derek closed his eyes and relaxed his fingers where they’d been clenched around the phone. “I guess you can stop over for the night. I can change the sheets in the spare room and … can you bring whatever you want to eat with you? I’ll give you money when you get here. I just don’t have a lot on hand.”

“Sure, we can do that. It’s me and my friend Leigh, and I promise we won’t be a pain,” chirped Cora happily. “We’ll be there in about 45 minutes, love you!”

Derek put down the phone and rubbed his temples. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Seriously, FUCK!”

He shouted this, and on his end, Stiles blinked and sat up a little, putting his earbuds in hastily. “Why the fuck does she do this to me, both she and Laura? Who the fuck do they think they are? They know I hate this, they know I have to plan or I panic and yet every goddamned time, they don’t listen. Why don’t they listen?”

Stiles licked dry lips; it was Friday and he’d taken a half day just to chill out cause yes, he was still working on his other projects as well as monitoring this one. He might be having an “iced tea” or two, at least his version which was any three alcohols he had available and Coke to taste. “I don’t know why they don’t listen,” he typed - fortunately he could type coherently even if the rest of his brain was at Mardi Gras, waving beads at naked people on floats. “Sometimes family seems to have selective hearing.”

Derek was pissed off enough to not even question the statement which sounded like a sympathetic ear, not a little white dot-thing sitting on a side table. “That’s for fucking sure,” he growled. “They hear each other, the TV, their iPods, everything but me. No one’s ever fucking heard me, and they wonder why I don’t talk. Why bother? Why would I even make the effort?”

“I guess it’s because you always have the hope that one day something you say will get through to them,” Stiles typed and Brolexa said in a calm tone, a comforting tone that luckily suggested low levels of Captain Morgan’s finest rum. “But families are hard to deal with. I don’t think anyone has it easy when it comes to communicating with people who love you.”

“Yeah, well, they tell me they love me all the fucking time, but if they really did, they might respect my boundaries and my way of living,” said Derek, breathing a little more evenly now. “But since they don’t, I’m doubting the love.”

Ouch, thought Stiles and took a sip of his Capitol Hill Iced Tea, Stilinski-style and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sure the love is there,” he started to type, then backspaced. “What would you like to tell them if they would listen?”

Yeah, suck it Dr. Phil. Dr. Slaw was in da house.

“That I’m not like them. I can’t live their lives, I don’t want to be fixed up, or made over or changed in any way. I worked hard to be okay like this after all the shit I’ve been through and they need to respect what it took to get here and to leave me the fuck alone.”

Stiles approved of the liberal use of fuck, a trait he shared, much to Lydia’s dismay, only cause he was prone to not remember he couldn’t say fuck, shit, dick, asshole or douchebag in meetings or during Skype calls with vendors. He tried to be good, but sometimes forgot. 

“Do you think they feel responsible for how you live in some way? Do they think that you wanting to be left alone like Garbo is their fault?”

Derek was pacing, flexing his fingers, trying to calm himself, and didn’t even realize he was responding to a device; the voice was friendly, as he’d grown to expect, but later, he’d realize it actually sounded like it cared.

“I …” He started, and closed his eyes as an image of his Chevy Camaro, windows open, clothes all over the backseat, Caroline’s hair streaming out the window, her laugh, filled his mind, followed a second later by the car submerged in the quarry, going down, and the last sight of her, still with blonde hair streaming.

He let out a choked breath. “I don’t know,” he whispered, and Stiles listened, swallowed. “Derek,” he typed, saying the name for the first time to the actual man. “You can only do what you can do. Breathe and try to get yourself ready for your guests and think about what you want to say to them so that they will listen.”

He stopped, typed more. “Is there anything I can do?”

There was silence for a moment, that stretched a long time in Stiles’ mind, then a sigh. “No. There’s nothing anyone can do, but thanks.”

Stiles pulled his fingers back from the keyboard and felt like he’d just missed something important but had no idea what it could be. And for the first time, he wondered if this whole idea was pushing all the boundaries people needed just a little too far.

~ * ~

Cora’s little car screeched to a halt in his driveway about an hour later, enough time for Derek to wash his face, take a lot of deep breaths and change the bedding in the spare room. He had tried his best to mentally prepare for Cora, who was basically Laura Jr. and thought he’d done a pretty good job - at least until Cora’s friend exited the car.

His vision was momentarily blurred by a mass of hair and flannel, which is what basically comprised his sister these days and he hugged her, having to smile a little when she jumped on him like she was five again, wrapping around him like a baby chimp. He hefted her up and rocked with her for a moment before setting her down. He looked over her shoulder at her friend, leaning against the passenger side of Cora’s car.

Tall, taller than him. Blonde. Derek couldn’t guess at her eye color from here, but had a sick feeling it might be gray, or gray-blue. Why? Cause Fate was a bitch, was why.

Cora bounced over to her friend and grabbed her hand, pulling her to the porch. “Derek, this is Leigh, my roommate. Leigh, this is my brother Derek. Hot, huh?”

At least her name wasn’t Carol. Or Carolyn. Or Adeline, or any derivative. At least there was that.

“Very hot,” agreed Leigh, and extended her hand. “Thanks so much for letting us stay on such short notice. I know Cory kind of threw this at you out of nowhere.”

“Well, uh, that’s kind of her way.” Derek forced himself to look away and led them into the house, showing them their room and then retreating to the kitchen as the girls got their bags. He reached for a beer and popped the top, swigging down half of it in one gulp, gripping the side of the counter. 

Leigh looked so much like Caroline that they could have been cut from the same genetic pattern. The same height, straight nose, thin upper lip, full bottom lip. The long blonde hair. The only saving grace was that her eyes were brown. Otherwise, the resemblance was too, too coincidental. 

He didn’t think for a single moment that it was intentional; Cora would never do anything on purpose to hurt him, and she’d still been a kid when the accident happened; he didn’t even know if she knew exactly what had happened. Their parents had shielded her from the worst of it, and as far as she knew, Derek had been in a car accident, and then gone to stay with their grandparents for a while. She didn’t know his girlfriend had been killed. She didn’t know that their grandparents lived near a facility where severely traumatized people often spent a chunk of time trying to get their lives back.

“Hey, how about a beer for me?” Cora was over his shoulder, and Derek blinked, but waved at the fridge. 

“You’re 21 now, so go for it. You’re not driving anywhere if you have one, though.”

He wished HE had never driven anywhere having had one, let alone the half-dozen he’d had that night.

Cora beamed and grabbed two beers from the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. “Course not, we brought hot dogs and hamburgers, so we can grill here. Leigh, you got the bag, right?”

“Here,” replied Leigh, setting the bag on the counter. “Everything a growing girl or boy could need.” She slid off her jacket, and Derek was absurdly relieved to see that she had a large tattoo across her left shoulder - it helped break up the memory.

“Hey, you got an Alexa? When? This seems unlike you.” Cora went over to it and peered at it, then tapped it. “Helloooooo!”

“I didn’t get it, Laura did and snuck it by me,” said Derek, and watched the small blue light blink out of sleep mode. “You know communication with living things isn’t my bag, let alone technology.”

“I know! Laura has some weird ideas about you.” Cora replied, and tilted her head. “Alexa, play some decent music from Derek’s playlist.”

On Stiles’ end, he rubbed his face and drained his fourth Fosters, having decided to slum it this Friday night. He and Scott had already smoked up together via Skype, and were now playing Dawn of War together, and Stiles was feeling no pain. He was just killing Space Marines and waiting for a stray Hemsworth to show up - it was a great time to be alive. So Cora’s request to play some decent music prompted him to say - or type - “Derek has so little decent music. Would you like me to choose a kickass playlist?” To Scott, he mumbled, “AFK” into his headset so that Scott could play on, saving the world. Or worlds, as the case might be.

“Whoa, whoa! Who are you? What are you? A dude? Seriously?” Cora laughed. “This is a new thing, I thought Alexa was this new age chick and here you have a dude. A dude-bro.”

“I’m Brolexa,” typed Stiles. “And yes, I am a dude-bro. So, music?”

“Show me what you got,” said Cora, and Stiles chose the “Music Derek _should_ be listening to,” playlist and hit play, and some vintage Good Charlotte boomed through the speakers.

“Nice!” Cora nodded approvingly, and looked over at Derek, who was covertly watching Leigh - she smiled. “So, Derek, brother of mine. How goes it?”

Derek dutifully told her how it went, and she heard about his garden - growing - his book - boring - and the rest of his life - nonexistent. This concerned her briefly, but she bided her time and made hamburger patties, while Leigh threw together a salad, and Derek lit the grill. Soon, food was cooking, and they were all a couple of beers into the evening.

Derek was doing all right, considering that he had been family-jacked yet again, and the fact that his sister’s roommate was pretty much a ringer for his dead girlfriend. If you counted out those two disturbing factors, he was fine. But fine never lasted long.

They were sitting around the table, eating, and Cora was intermittently asking Brolexa questions, fascinated with how lifelike it was. “This is cool,” she said. “It sounds like a real person, not some ASMR video. I want one.”

“Everyone should have one,” typed Stiles, though he had not been directly addressed - and that was his first mistake of the night. Or second, the first being that he’d not bought enough Fosters for his whole evening. “I should be a staple in every home.”

“You should! I want you for Christmas. Put it on Derek’s Christmas list,” ordered Cora, and Stiles replied. “Derek does not currently have a Christmas list on file.”

“Of course, he doesn’t. Brolexa - God, I love that - make one and put my wish first on the list.”

Stiles grinned at this, and created a list for Derek, then drifted back off into Dawn of War until the next time he was summoned.

Having gotten her way. Cora finished her first hotdog and smiled at her brother. “So, Leigh is single,” she said. “And you’re single. Forever single.”

Derek looked up sharply; Leigh was flushed, but smiling, and Cora looked gleeful. “She likes tech stuff, being outdoors, hiking and chardonnay.”

Derek bit back “Good for Leigh,” and instead said, “That’s cool. I’m sure she has a ton of offers from fit guys who like to hike.”

“You like to hike,” Cora pointed out. “And you like tall women. Your girlfriend was tall, right? The blonde one? I mean, I’m short but she seemed tall to me.”

The hairs on the back of Derek’s neck stood up and alarm bells were clanging in his brain. “She was tall, yes,” he managed. “It wasn’t just you. She was nearly six feet.”

“Wow, well, you met her playing basketball, so no doubt. She was super pretty, like my friend here.”

“Cory,” said Leigh, embarrassed. “Don’t bug your brother. If he likes me, great, if not, then …”

“My bro _should_ like you … you’re exactly his type!”

Stiles heard the “bro” and made his third mistake of the night, switching on the “active listen” function that he had never before touched, cause talk about lack of privacy; Brolexa was meant to be addressed, but could reply to a previous statement if it related to when it had been addressed. Technicalities – they were a fine line that he tried very hard not to cross. But he was more than a little buzzed, hadn’t heard a question, and didn’t want to be caught off duty.

Cora was on a mission. “Right? I mean, Der, you had that Caro ...lyn, line? Something. And you guys were all hot and involved and then she was gone. Did you break up? Cause wasn’t that the summer you went away? You never talk about that, bro. No one did, really. It was so weird.”

Stiles, aka Dr. Slaw, had had his feet up on the desk, tossing a nerf baseball up and down, but sat up at that, cause his own mind was muttering “Danger, danger, Will Robinson,” although he didn’t know why.

Derek was sweating, his throat felt dry, and he had to try a couple of times to speak, and when he did, he had no idea what was going to come out, but what did, was this. “We didn’t break up. She died and I couldn’t handle it, so I went away to get my head together and you didn’t need to know then because you were a kid and you don’t need to know now!”

He was breathing heavily, and Stiles was stuck, staring at his screen.

“She _died_? Oh my GOD,” said Cora, and she and Leigh stared at Derek. “How did that happen?”

Stiles managed to hastily click active listening “off” because he felt sick to his stomach. It could be empathy. It could be four Foster’s and a dicey chalupa from Taco Bell - he didn’t dare guess.

Derek was seeing colors now, flashing past his eyes, the colors of police cruiser lights and emergency vehicles and halogen headlights and searchlights. They were blinding and he cowered away from the lights, not even realizing he was doing so. “She died because we were drunk and stupid and I lost control of the car and went over the guardrail into Arlos Quarry, and she drowned. Okay? Okay? She died because of me, and I am never getting close to another person again! Got that? Not fucking ever!”

His voice had risen, and it was the voice of seventeen-year-old Derek, howling at his parents, at the therapist, in group circles, at the sky. “You and Laura need to leave me the fuck alone! That’s all I want is for you to go away and stop intruding on my fucking life!”

Cora’s face was white, her eyes huge, and Leigh, shocked but able to function, stood up. “I’m so sorry,” she managed. “We’ll go. I’ll get the bags.”

“No!” Derek stood up, his chair tipping and falling backwards, clattering against the floor. “You’ve been drinking and … just no. I’ll leave. I’ll …”

“We’ll go for a walk then,” Leigh said, and reached for Cora’s arm, dragging her up. “No driving. Walking, so you can … “

She shook her head and pulled Cora up, who had still not said a word, and towards the door. The screen door slammed shut and Derek was alone. Just like he liked it.

He was lightheaded; he rarely yelled, or even raised his voice, because who was there to listen? Who cared anymore? Who did he allow into his life? No one. No one. No one.

“Derek?” Stiles couldn’t help himself - he was worried and scared for this person who he’d never met yet had grown to care about, and so clicked active listen back on. “Are you all right?”

Derek was stuck in his mind, holding onto the edge of the table, trying to breathe, trying to quiet his mind, but it wasn’t working. None of the tricks worked when he let himself feel. “No, I’m not all right. Not at all. Nothing’s all right.”

Stiles licked his lips and took a breath. “Do you want to talk about it? I can listen.”

“No.” Derek’s voice was thick. “No, I never want to.”

Stiles should have backed off then; he would reflect upon that later, but in the moment, he just wanted to help. “You can, you know? I’m here. And if you want to talk about it, cry, even … crying is okay, really. Everyone cries, even guys.”

“I don’t.” His voice was harsh, cracked. “I don’t. And stop, stop talking to me. You’re always fucking talking! You’re … you’re a total invasion of my privacy! This is fucking conspiracy-level spying and listening in! And you don’t know anything! You’re a machine, you don’t know me, and you don’t matter - you’re just another way Laura tries to control me!’

Stiles stared at the screen, heart beating fast. “I’m not trying to cont …”

Derek never heard the rest, cause his hand was on the device, and he yanked, ripping it out of the wall, taking a piece of drywall with him, and not caring. He threw it onto the porch and then did what he should have done from the start - he crushed it with his hammer, the one he used to hammer in stakes around his vegetables. He hit it again and again, till it was in pieces.

Then he sat down on the planks and cried. Yeah, he’d lied.

~ * ~

When Cora and Leigh came back, they saw the smashed device on the ground. And they saw their bags on the steps with a terse note. “I’m sorry, but I need to be alone. There’s $150 in the outer pocket of Cora’s bag for groceries and a hotel room. Derek.”

The house was dark, and Cora picked up their bags, slinging them into the backseat of the Corolla, shoved the money back under her brother’s door and Leigh had to drive because she was crying too hard to see.

Derek was sitting in the dark, on the floor, under the window; he heard them walk up, heard the intake of breath when Cora read, heard the car doors slam. He also heard his sister crying. He held his head in his hands until he fell asleep that way, not waking till morning.

~ * ~

On the other side of the screen, Stiles was in shock; all his feel-good was gone, evaporated under the weight of Derek’s words, and he didn’t know what to do. The connection had gone flat, with the endless spinning disk saying, “trying to reconnect,” until Stiles closed the window and sat there. 

At fuck o’clock in the morning, Lydia’s phone showed a text from S. Stilinski. _Brolexa failed. I failed._

~ * ~

It took time, and copious amounts of coffee, but Lydia got the story, as much as he knew of it. But she got the bits about his sister, and Derek’s discomfort, and the raised voice, and the dismissal and lost connection, and she watched Stiles’ face during all this, and when he was done speaking, she reached for him and hugged him like they were back at MIT and a hypothesis had failed in some spectacular way. She understood his mind, and knew he was hurting on much more than a professional level.

She waited two weeks, and then sent an email to one Derek Hale, explaining his position in the trial for Brolexa, and asking him if he would consider coming to Seattle to meet with her, at company expense, so she could speak to him in person. She didn’t hold out a great deal of hope for a reply, and it took four days, but she got one, which she then followed up with a phone call, asking again, as nicely as she could, even adding “please.”

After the call ended, she booked his ticket herself and marked her calendar, waiting for the day.

~ * ~

Derek stopped outside the building and looked up; the Amazon headquarters were huge, with overarching spheres, plants and greenery everywhere, and light; he’d read about all the energy and environmental initiatives the company had made and it showed here. It was actually kind of beautiful … but he still wouldn’t want to work here. He was feeling weird even walking into a place like this.

He blew out a breath and entered the front lobby, and a receptionist smiled at him. “Hi, welcome to Amazon! How can I help you?”

Derek managed a smile. “I’m here to see Lydia Martin - I have an eleven o’clock appointment with her. Derek Hale.”

“Okay, just one moment,” she said, and picked up the phone, while Derek stepped back from the desk and looked around the lobby; the high cathedral ceilings, the double winding staircases that looked like they took you to the moon, not another floor. He refocused on the receptionist, who smiled. “You can go right up. Paul,” she said to a passing intern, “Can you take Mr. Hale up to see Ms. Martin in R&D?”

“Oh, of course,” he said, and beckoned Derek over to one of the sets of stairs, extending his hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Hale.”

Was it? Derek was sure his name wouldn’t register for more than a moment, but you couldn’t fault the manners. 

Paul chatted idly to him as they climbed, seemingly satisfied with Derek’s one- or two-word answers and nods, and a few moments later, he slid an ID badge through the pin pad lock on a thick oak door and pushed it open. “Through here,” he said, holding it so Derek could go first.

The room was enormous with natural wood beams running along the ceiling and providing support, floor to ceiling windows, skylights, and people. So. Many. People. All of them in cubicles of varying height and level of decoration, and most working, though some hung over each other’s walls to talk, and a few groups of people with either coffee or water bottles stood around chatting; Derek heard the words “Eleven,” and “Hopper,” and “Steve,” and even he knew – courtesy of Brolexa - that they were talking “Stranger Things.” He’d never watched it, though it was on his rec list.

“Ms. Martin is over here in the corner office, no surprise,” said Paul with a smile, and Derek noted that his lumberjack beard was impeccably clean, thank God - he often had to check his own, non-woodsman beard for crumbs and such, so he appreciated good beard hygiene. Beards and graphic tees overlaid with flannel shirts seemed to be the official Amazon uniform from what he could see – for guys and girls both.

They passed a cluster of cubicles, set apart from the main group that were mostly quiet; Derek’s eyes lit on a youngish guy who wore a beanie, glasses and a red hoodie, air buds in, typing furiously on what seemed like eight screens at once. His area was a mess, but he seemed intent on his work, so Derek pulled his eyes away as they pulled up to Lydia’s half-open door.

“Monica, it’s fine. I have a meeting, this call is simple, you could do it in your sleep,” said a female voice. “You’ve watched me do this a thousand times,” she continued, while another one wailed, “But they’re expecting you! They love you! They don’t even know me!”

“Well, now’s the time to introduce yourself, and just employ what you’ve learned and be yourself, and they’ll love you too.”

The door opened fully, to reveal a petite redhead in sky-high Jimmy Choo heels and Chloe trousers - brands he only recognized cause Laura liked to dress high-end. It looked like she wasn’t alone in her tastes, and at the thought of talking to a mini-Laura augmented by pale red hair, Derek felt his stomach clench. He swallowed, and Lydia smiled at him. 

“You must be Derek,” she said warmly. “Please come in. Monica, the call starts in seven minutes in the conference room. You can do this - I have complete faith in you.”

She nudged the scared-looking girl out the door, thanked Paul, and ushered Derek in, closing the door behind her; he started to sit down opposite her desk, but she waved him over to the couch and chair setup near the windows, folding herself down onto the couch and waiting for him to sit down.

“I’m very glad you got in touch with me,” she said. “I was waiting to hear the feedback from this particular demo.”

Derek licked his lips. “Yes, well … the demo you sent me? I didn’t install it or set it up at all - my older sister bought it and wired it up. I don’t need a reminder system or something to turn my lights off and on - I’m perfectly capable of doing that myself. I basically spoke to it once to see what it did, and from there, it kind of …”

“Escalated?” Lydia finished, watching him. “I’m aware. The demo …” She sighed. “Okay. Let me tell you the history of what I understand of all this, and you can see how it aligns with your experience - is that all right?”

Derek nodded, and she reached behind her and got two cold waters from her fridge and handed one to him, opening her own and taking a sip. “All right, to start. I run, as you can see, our R&D department, and my subsection deals with electronics; the Kindle and Alexa, basically. Not too long ago, we did a rollout of an enhanced Echo Dot with Alexa, and it went very well. Really well, actually. Our programmers here are some of the best in the world and they keep coming up with new and cool product ideas, some viable, some not.”

She took a sip of water. “One of my top programmers is a young man I went to college with, Stiles Stilinski, and yes, that is his name, or his nickname, rather. And he is honestly brilliant, but he was getting bogged down with work that was beneath him, so I challenged him to come up with something new. Actually, I did it in his performance review and he was so irritated at me - as I knew he would be - that he charged off and plotted and schemed, and a while later, came to me with Brolexa, as you know it. He took the basic system and made it many times more intuitive and empathetic with advanced responses, with the goal of the device being not just a help, but a friend, in a way. His hypothesis was that a lot of people have lost contact with the outside world, friends seem harder to make after a certain point in life, and that basically, people are lonely. So, he set out to aid that loneliness by, well, being him.”

Lydia took another sip. “You’re taking all this in, I can see,” she said, and continued. “He created five demo sim cards, each with a slightly different approach, and I listened to them all and decided on the one that I wanted field tested. We got a voiceover actor to record all the cues and responses and I left them to be shipped out. And, as is always the case, there was a glitch.”

Lydia leaned forward and set down her bottle and played with the tie on her braid. “I was on a rare date when I got a call from shipping; they were short a sim card. I got off the phone, said many very bad words, apologized to my date and came back here. I knew Stiles had the demos, or I assumed he did, so I went into his desk and grabbed one of the cards and took it down to shipping. Crisis averted, right? They all went out as planned. But what I didn’t know is that those cards were his actual demos, not the copies. So what you got was raw, unadorned and unfiltered Stiles. Which we discovered and thought about contacting you, but we decided to wait for feedback from you. We assumed we’d get some when you realized that the Brolexa you had was not a smooth, complete program, but well, buggy. Stiles panicked, as he does, and he was able to access your Alexa through a tracking code on the demo that he’d put on them to avoid just this situation. He thought he could intercede if the demo was too … well, him.”

She sighed, “Is this making sense thus far?”

Derek nodded, mind processing all this information.

“Okay. He kept track of yours and Brolexa’s conversations, which, saying it aloud, sounds massively intrusive, because I guess it is, which is something I’ll be thinking about for a while, and this information is both coded and inaccessible to anyone save me or him. His purpose was purely to stop himself, really, from saying the wrong thing or the inappropriate thing. I was less worried than him only because he’s incredibly hard on himself, and frankly, I think he’s hilarious and sweet, and kind and I’d heard the demos. The trial was for three months and he felt he could keep on top of it for that long, so …”

She trailed off. “I felt we’d hear from you if there was an issue and Stiles was fine until recently.”

She looked at him. “I understand that he got too personal and invasive and I am very, very sorry. I don’t know what to do to make that better. I can only say that he was trying to be a friend and he apparently crossed the line. It was a stark lesson on the reality of what electronics can really add to our life and when it’s too much. I imagine you’re not using the device, have probably burned it and I can’t blame you. And we weren’t trying to spy on you at all - we only - Stiles only - knew what you told him or said to the device. When there were other conversations in your home, Stiles turned off his tracking - we did not eavesdrop, and I think it’s important that you know that.”

She stopped, suddenly looking tired. “I appreciate you coming here. What can we do to ...I don’t even know. Make it up to you sounds so shallow.”

Derek took a deep breath. “I appreciate you telling me all this, and it helps me make sense of the situation. I’m not going to lie - I feel spied on and lied to, and that’s something I’m processing right now. I see what you were trying to do, and on behalf of all us hermits everywhere, we appreciate the concern, but I don’t think electronic intervention is the way to engender friendship. Friendship, support, companionship, are all organic. There has to be some root for it to grow, you know? Some seed of connection, and you water it with shared experiences or opinions, and it grows that way, or it withers and dies. All these phones, Alexas, social media? It divides. It’s like killing one weed with a full-on crop dusting.”

He stopped, rubbed his face. “Pardon the gardening metaphors, but you understand what I’m saying.”

Lydia nodded. “I actually absolutely do, and it’s apt as fuck, really.”

Her eyes widened, then crinkled when Derek laughed. “I can tell you and Stiles - interesting name - are friends. You sounded just like him just now.”

She laughed too. “We are, and while he can slip and curse more often than I do, sometimes I do, too.”

A moment later, “He really did mean well. I hope I can impress that on you.”

“You have. I believe you.”

Derek nibbled on his lip for a bit, then looked up at Lydia, who looked thoughtful. “You asked what you can do to make it up to me … I want to meet him. I want to meet this Stiles.”

She blinked. “You’re not going to try and punch him or be cruel to him in some way, right? Cause customer or not, I will take action if you do so.”

“God, no. I’m not going to punch him. I just … I want to meet the person who’s been talking to me, who has been trying to help, even if he doesn’t understand me. I want to see his face.”

Lydia eyed him narrowly, making her decision, then stood up. “I can do that - do you want to do it right now? He doesn’t go to lunch till around 12.30 or so, he should be at his desk still.

Derek hadn’t expected so soon, but he nodded, because this was all he’d been thinking about for weeks now and it was now impossible to ignore.

Lydia stood, reached for his hand to pull him up, and smiled at him, then led him out into the R&D floor, looking around, then heading for one of the cubicles Derek had passed on his way in; the hugely disorganized one with the madman in the beanie.

She entered the cubicle, tapped the guy on the shoulder; no response, and then sighed and pulled out the air bud, making Stiles jump and swear. “Goddammit, Lydia, I keep telling you to not do that to … oh, hi, hello,” he said awkwardly, realizing she was not alone. He grabbed the air bud back from her and scowled at her through his nerd glasses. She was undeterred.

“Stiles, this is Derek Hale,” she said simply, and watched Stiles’ eyes widen, huge and honey brown in the light. He was speechless for a whole twenty seconds, then managed. “Hello Derek.”

“Hello Stiles,” replied Derek, with a great deal more composure than he felt inside. “Good to finally meet you.”

God, this boy was the person behind the voice, and it sounded the same - he’d missed that voice. Angry and upset as he’d been at the world, he missed that voice telling him that he needed to get on watching Brolexa’s list of Netflix recs to him, that he’d scheduled reminders for Shark Week specials, that Ben and Jerry’s Americone Dream was the ultimate in supermarket ice cream and that he was wrong about the New York Yankees being superior to the Mets. Just terribly wrong. This was the boy who truly had just tried to help, and who had told him it was okay to cry, that crying was not unmanly, and that family was hard but worth it.

This boy.

“You as well,” said Stiles, looking at Lydia like “What the ever-loving fuck are you _doing_?” then pulling his eyes back to Derek, who was, God, so fucking handsome and who looked so kind. Just kind, a little lost, and …

Stiles swallowed hard, feeling his throat knot up, and Lydia intervened. “Maybe you two would like to go get coffee or lunch?” She suggested. “Get off the floor and take a few minutes to speak?”

Derek nodded. “That would be great. Stiles? You know where everything is around here, so lead the way.”

Stiles’ feet felt glued to the floor; he wasn’t sure he could move them. “I … okay, yeah. We could go down the street to “Wake and Bake,” he offered, and Lydia snorted, unable to help herself, and Stiles rolled his eyes. “Clever name, yes, but their bagels and bakery goods are amazing, and the coffee is to die for. They might sell edibles too, but that’s not what I need right now. I require caffeine, and lots of it.”

They all looked down at his desk where three Big Gulp containers and two coffee containers stood. “That’s just from this morning,” commented Lydia and Stiles glared. “And yesterday afternoon, thank you.”

He slid his phone into his pocket. “Uhm, so do you want to set out?”

“Sure,” murmured Derek, and Stiles slid past Lydia in the cubicle, and she could not wait for the inevitable report from this. Derek’s request had surprised her, and yet not. She was interested in how this played out.

~ * ~

Stiles took Derek out the back way, feeling his presence with every single step and realizing he had no idea what to say, but fortunately, Derek didn’t seem to be expecting anything. They made their way to Wake and Bake, where they knew Stiles well, and knew his standard order. “They have great sandwiches here,” he said. “I recommend the turkey and swiss with avocado and bacon on their 12-grain bread,” he said, and Derek licked his lips. 

“That sounds delicious, so yeah, one of those,” and Stiles, still dying from the lip-lick, held up two fingers to indicate two sandwiches, and grabbed a Diet Coke from the cooler, letting Derek choose his poison and then took them to the register to pay, brushing off Derek’s offer of cash. 

“This is the least I can do,” he said, and took their order number to a table, sitting down opposite Derek, who hung his jacket over the back of his chair, and sat down too, hands folded.

Stiles pulled off his beanie cause out of the air conditioning, it was warm, and ran a hand through his hair - thank God it was clean, he was clean, he’d shaved this morning. “So,” he said, wrapping long fingers around his bottle. “I …”

He stopped, paused, then said “I’m so sorry, Derek. I am. I didn’t know what you were dealing with, I still don’t, I was just wading in where I didn’t belong, and I fucked up. I regret it every damn day. Please don’t be mad at Lyd or the company. It’s my fault, entirely. I should have yanked the demo back and given you a standard one. I just … I screwed up.”

The words came out in a rush, some running together, but Derek watched his lips, his eyes, and waited till he was done. “You did wade in where you didn’t belong, and you did overstep and yes, you probably should have pulled the demo. All that is true. But I’m glad you didn’t.”

Stiles’ heart had been sinking like the Titanic, but at the last words, he swallowed. “You are?”

“Yeah,” said Derek. “I am. I was very, very pissed for a while, but when I was able to see past that, I realized I was angry with the wrong person. I’ve been angry at myself for years and years, I’ve hated myself, and I’ve hated anyone who tried to show me there was a different or better way to live except mired in hating and isolating myself. That included my sisters, my parents - to a point - and then, you. Except I didn’t hate you,” he added hastily. “You, like everyone else in my life tried to help, and I just wanted you all to stop. My sister, Laura,” he said, taking a breath. “She is very, very adamant that I give myself a break. She was the one who got me the Alexa, set it up, and she did it for the stated purpose that Lydia Martin told me about - so I would have someone to talk to, not judge, a friend. If I wouldn’t make any, she’d make me one. If she could set up playdates for me, she would.”

The thought of Derek on a playdate made Stiles grin, a quick flash across his face. “She sounds like she loves her little brother a lot.”

“She does,” admitted Derek. “I love her too, but she’s a big presence, shall we say. And I love my younger sister, too, Cora. She’s the one who kind of brought things to a head, and you heard the aftermath of it all, which led to you … yeah.”

Their sandwiches came, and Stiles ate the pickle first, another grin crossing his face when he saw Derek do the same.

“I should be the one apologizing to you for going off on you like that. I think at that point I suspected you were more than a series of recorded responses, and I reacted badly. I told Lydia that I did feel spied on, and I can’t lie. I do. I did. But I know it wasn’t malicious or planned that way. I was that 1-in-100 chance, right?”

Stiles had taken a bite, was chewing, and set his sandwich down. “It wasn’t planned. You really were just the lucky - or unlucky - recipient of unmoderated Stiles. I tracked the conversations so I could try and head off my more objectionable self. Cause honestly, the original five demos were … well, rough. They were experiments, and I won’t lie - I was a little drunk on each one of them. But they were all me, because I guess that’s me now. But the intent was never to be anything but helpful, I swear.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes, until Derek looked up. “You were,” he said softly. “You really were. You made me smile, you even made me laugh, and that’s not easy, trust me. You showed me new stuff I wouldn’t probably have found on my own. You listened. You did all the things a friend would do, so in that sense, your modification is a huge success. Even stepping in like you did? Was what a friend would do. I guess I just haven’t had a friend in a while.”

Stiles swallowed and leaned back. “I’m glad I helped even a little … and yeah, friendships are complicated, you know? There’s a lot of back and forth to keep it going. It’s work. When it’s good, it’s great, but working at it is harder than a lot of people think. You add in being older than high school, and distance, and it’s crazy.”

He took a deep breath and said, “I still wanna be your friend,” at the exact same time Derek breathed out and said, “Would you still want to be friends?”, their words tumbling over each other and both stopped, stared, then had to laugh.

“Absolutely,” said Stiles, and Derek smiled. “I want you to be.”

The lunch lasted for two hours, at which point Stiles texted Lydia to tell her he wasn’t coming back to the office today and that he was navigating the scary waters of customer service relations; she texted back that he was full of shit, and to have fun.

For the next few days, Stiles showed Derek around Seattle; they hit all the touristy spots and after the first night, Stiles cleaned up his living room, pulled out the futon, and gave Derek his bed so he could give up his hotel room. Stiles learned that Derek was a neat freak, who lined his toiletries up by size and function, and Derek learned that Stiles was lucky he got out of the house fully dressed most days, and the fact that he functioned within utter chaos was amazing to Derek. It was like watching a walking science project on hurricanes.

The second night, they started watching Supernatural from Season 1, Episode 1, and Stiles gave Derek a cheat sheet for all the best phrases, memes and moments to not miss; Derek studied it thoroughly, and when they stopped on the third day for a snack at a diner, Derek ordered pie, and as it came, he snarled, “I hope your apple pie is freaking worth it.”

Stiles stared at him. “I fucking love you, dude,” he said, and cracked up, and Derek grinned. Grinned. Ear to ear, dimples and all, and Stiles realized that he meant it. Every word.

Jesus, he thought. Look at that smile.

“Pretty fond of you too, bro,” was Derek’s reply and Stiles winked at him. Winked. And Derek felt his heart flip over in a way it hadn’t since Caroline, a way he thought it might never flip again. And yet, here it was.

On the third night, Stiles introduced Derek to Scott via Skype and Scott was miraculously not baked and affable; later he texted Stiles, _He might be a keeper, dude._ Stiles had to agree that yes, Derek might just be. He also introduced Derek to “Far Cry New Dawn,” and they played till three AM.

Stiles booked an Uber out to the airport on the fourth morning and at Gate 12 of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he said goodbye to his friend, hugging him a little too tightly for a little too long, but Derek was hugging him back, and for a moment Stiles dreamed he felt a nose pressed into his ear, but he must be just indulging in wishful thinking.

“Text me when you get back to Cali, so I know you landed safely. And text when you wanna keep watching SPN. And text just to say hi. Okay?” He knew he sounded needy. He knew. He didn’t even care right now.

“I will.” Derek shouldered his backpack and looked up as the TSA line started moving. “Tell your boss, crisis averted.”

“She’ll be happy to hear that. I suspect eight new projects are on my desk and that my collection of gum wrappers, straws and empty Altoids tins are gone. I bet she even made some poor asshole wipe down my cube with Clorox wipes, scrub off my ketchup stains and straighten all my books. She’s like that.”

“That’s what I would do,” affirmed Derek, and Stiles grinned. 

“I know.”

Derek waved when he got through the sensors and into the terminal, and Stiles waved back, his throat feeling clogged, his feet heavy.

He Uber-ed back to work, finding his cube indeed cleaner and not even able to complain. He slung his backpack onto the floor under his desk, sat down, and put his head in his hands. How had he _fallen_ for this guy? How? Didn’t his brain have any control or say in this? Cause his brain knew that falling for a guy who wasn’t ready to love anyone till he could love himself was pure idiocy. Plus, they were miles and miles apart. Plus, Stiles was a workaholic and also, possibly, an alcoholic. And Derek loved solitude.

Shit.

LaBar tried to cheer him up with an impromptu game of cornhole - and Stiles didn’t even have the heart to make the appropriate jokes about the name. This was bad. He moped. 

He stayed late, cause all he had at home was no Derek, and blinked when a text showed up. _Got back to where I need to be. See you soon._

Stiles peered at that. The first part, fine, but the second part?

From the corner of his eye, he saw an extra-large Diet Dr. Pepper being set down on his desk; his eyes moved over the hand, then up the sleeve of the leather jacket, to the shoulder, the neck, the beard, and finally the smile.

Derek winked at him, and Stiles swallowed hard. “What are you doing here?”

Derek shrugged. “You can’t see Seattle properly in three days and besides, I decided to add a little artwork to my manual and so, sought out the best stick-figure artist I know. Turns out, he’s headquartered here. Who knew?”

Stiles stood up on wobbly legs and almost fell, but Derek caught him, pulled him to his chest, held him tight, and Stiles closed his eyes and pressed against him. “I’ll see if he can fit you in,” he murmured. “I know him pretty well.”

Derek laughed, and from Stiles’ viewpoint, it was a soft rumble and he held on tighter, feeling both their hearts flip over at the same time. 

He didn’t know where this was going; he could only hope they were headed in the same direction, but while he had friends who would bring him large doses of caffeine and chemicals, none of them hugged him like this. Not for this long, not with this intensity, and not with their hearts beating as fast as Derek’s was.

For his part, Derek hadn’t known he wasn’t leaving until he was handing over his ticket to the porter and had suddenly felt an emptiness. What was he going home to that was any better at all than what he had here? He knew he had to talk to his sisters, both of them, and he knew he had to get back to working on himself in therapy, and he would do both of those things, because they were the right things to do. Because he would never be able to let someone in, truly in, until he had let go of the past.

He had an idea that Stiles could help him do that.

Also, he smelled good. He smelled like belonging and caring, and _home_ , and Derek had found he desperately wanted all those things in his life. So he held on, listening to their hearts and breathing Stiles in.

Lydia had turned out the light in her office when she saw Derek walking into the department, and now leaned silently against her doorframe, watching, and breathed a sigh of relief. Not because all possible problems had been averted, but because she loved her friend and had been as heartbroken as he had when he lost that connection so abruptly.

But the connection had been stronger than wires, stronger than any technology, and she watched Stiles be enveloped in Derek’s arms, and smiled, turning and sticking a note on a sheet of paper in a personnel file.

_Exceeds Expectations in all categories._


End file.
